How We Live Now
by mellowenglishgal
Summary: I loved the book and the film was extraordinary: This is my take on what I feel should have been the ending. They find their way back to each other.
1. Chapter 1

**A.N.** : After blitzing through the book, I thought the film adaptation of _How I Live Now_ was exceptional, I thought they did a wonderful job of showing us what Daisy describes, the whimsical feeling of the pre-war parts of the story, Daisy's constant references to the thriving beauty of the English countryside in the midst of war (which as a native English girl, I agree with totally; on a sunny day there is nowhere on earth more beautiful than the English countryside). And I love Daisy and Edmond: The film shows them together as something natural.

It's rare that I don't want to rewrite something completely: I just wanted to do a little snippet, my version of the ending.

* * *

 **How We Live Now**

 _01_

* * *

She wondered if anyone had ever hoped of an oasis not _from_ the sun but _of_ the sun. Something so extraordinarily, unrelentingly beautiful it couldn't be believed. Yellow irises stood tall and proud, petals unfurled to the sunlight dappled through the trees, the silver-green leaves shimmering and sighing in a gentle breeze that rippled across the water. She sank to the damp grass, her body thrumming but long numbed to pain, smiling in a sort of delirious half-dazed bleary way, wondering if Piper's wood-pixie father might've appeared from a place like this to court Aunt Penn. It wasn't the first time she had entertained the thought that Piper and her brothers must be some kind of mystical creatures.

Eyes bleary, delirious from starvation and punishing overexertion, somehow she made it to her back, staring unseeing into the forget-me-not sky, clouds skudding past idly.

It was a wonder she saw it.

If it hadn't shrieked, she wouldn't have noticed it.

A hawk.

 _Eddie's_ hawk.

To pass the time as they marched, Piper had tried to teach her the difference between bird calls; she could now name a dozen birds and for a girl raised in the concrete jungle up until months ago, Daisy thought that was progress. But she would never forget the hawk, the shrill, beautiful sound she made when Eddie had released her back into the wild, as she had swooped and dived joyously.

She blinked, tears of exhaustion slowly dripping down the sides of her face, and stared up, as the large bird swooped and circled. And she knew. Eddie. Edmond's hawk. That beautiful dawn they had climbed the hill…before everything happened. Just her, and Edmond, and the healed hawk with her beautiful dark eyes and elegant head, those striking feathers.

If she hadn't believed in signs or divine intervention or the alignment of the cosmos, in that moment she was converted. The sign of that hawk got them on their blistered, bloodied feet once more, the hours of forced marching forgotten, practically running as they dipped out of woodlands to trace hedgerows and check footpath signs and climbed rickety, rotting stiles, landing in six inches of mud that squelched and made Piper smile distractedly at the sucking noise as they waded out of the muck, determined. Across fields of gold sighing in the breeze and meadows vivid with wildflowers, fields of crops curiously untouched, over fresh green hills, they chased the hawk, relying on the memory of a nine-year-old pixie.

How long had it been since they were here last? Months. Or years? It was still as lush and green and vibrant as the first time she had seen it, seemingly untouched by Man, cocooning them. She recognised now what she hadn't realised then; that nature had seemed to be protecting them from reality, surrounding them with such vibrancy and life that the idea of death and war seemed absurd. Because how could anything bad possibly be happening, when here…absolutely _nothing_ was happening. Nothing but the relentless, minute and unnoticeable struggle for _life_ , Nature's ceaseless battle.

Mother Nature was celebrating, here in this quiet and forgotten pocket of England: the hedgerows were overgrown and heavy with fading blossoms, birds' nests and fruit; ticking, humming, chirping insects the background orchestra to birds trilling their songs to the heavens; clouds billowed idly, occasionally breaking the muggy warmth with brief deluges of cool rain that slid down the neck of her rain-coat and cleared the air for a few hours, cool and warm at the same time, the wildlife exulting in the life-giving rain, everything seeming to burst with freshness and scent. Streams gurgled magically, evoking _The Wind in the Willows_ and lazy sun-drenched afternoons picking wildflowers, their Perfect Day; leaves sighed in the gentle, damp breeze, water dripping from enormous lush leaves as they made their way through the woods, the scent of damp earth somehow strengthening to her, Piper's little hand glued to hers, striding up close as they recognised the lay of the land and trepidation filled them.

It wasn't hope that urged them on. Edmond's hawk was the only thing Daisy had faith in; and her own will-power. Keep Piper alive; to keep herself alive.

Eddie's hawk gave them that last surge, filled them with adrenaline, to push ahead those last few miles, to familiar territory. This was Piper's land; she knew it as surely as she knew Edmond and Isaac, and most likely Daisy by now too.

She didn't know what it had cost Daisy to get them both here, slowing their pace, dread curdling with anticipation and the nauseating sense of loss churning in her stomach as the battered Jeep full of trash came into view, exactly where they had left it, and the sandstone house as old as time came into view - exactly as they had last seen it. Without any sign of occupation, that she could tell. It was quiet, but for the birdsong and the hum of insects.

There were no carrion birds, no bold foxes.

Nature had found a way to tell Daisy much more than she had learned from other humans over the last few months.

A few stubborn roses still clung to the front of the house, the overgrown vines vivid and lush: the heavy blooms were pure white, and she wondered whether the Land Army guys had ever stopped to stare and appreciate how picturesque and beautiful the home was. And it was a home. They had sequestered it for the War Effort but it was clearly a home, with the enormous kitchen with zigzag brick floors and the enormous hearth in the living-room with squashy sofas and thousands of blankets, Piper's paintings everywhere and candid photographs of baby Edmond and toddler Piper and a grinning Isaac reminding everyone of their own kids or brothers and sisters.

Maybe that was why they hadn't trashed the house.

Everything was nearly as they had left it, though the cupboards were nearly empty in the kitchen, and most of the furniture had been pushed to the sides of the rooms. There were no broken windows, the doors weren't hanging off the hinges, and even the toilets weren't in a horrific state. The photographs and artwork was still hanging on the walls, Aunt Penn's computer in her study had gathered dust, and even the glittery sign painted by Piper 'Danger - Mummy at Work' was still affixed to the study-door, possibly because no-one had bothered to take it down; the knickknacks on the upright piano were still there, though the decorative candles had long since been used.

The bedrooms were intact, even Daisy's small white room with its thick walls and pretty yellow eiderdown and matching blinds; the vase of bluebells Piper had picked in May when the woods were carpeted with them were colourless and brittle now, and Daisy stared at them for the longest time before Piper brushed up against her, slipping her little paw into Daisy's hand.

Those bluebells, like Eddie's hawk, were proof that…Daisy had once been here, _before_. Before the world turned upside down, _their_ world, where the vibrant nature all around them had lulled them into the sense that they were untouchable, cocooned in safety - the safety of the adventure, without parents, the safety of their fierce, confusing and intoxicating love.

The weather had started to turn, not dramatically but noticeably; having spent most of the last few months out-of-doors, it was even more apparent that summer had reached its end, and though the house was close, it wasn't hot. The ancient sandstone walls kept out the excessive heat of summer - and would make the wood-burning stoves and fireplaces life-saving in winter.

They checked every room, hand-in-hand, quietly, almost reverentially, and Daisy saw everything through a stranger's eyes. How long had she been here, and enjoyed her life with her family here, before the bombing of London, and the declaration of war? Was it weeks? Or days? She couldn't remember, had only the recollection of true happiness and confusing, consuming love, sinking into the feeling that she had been away for too long, and was home now.

It didn't feel like that this time. Without Gin or Jet or Dink or quirky Isaac or quiet Edmond with his speaking, solemn eyes, or even Piper's incessant humming and chatter and big pretty eyes, the sandstone walls that kept out the heat seemed to stifle the ticking of the insects, muting the birdsong to a soft chorus in the corner of her ear.

The house was quiet, and full of ghosts; her free hand clenched in a spasm, she swallowed the lump in her throat, and glanced down solemnly at Piper.

"Maybe they're in the barn?" She nodded distractedly. Anything to batter away the errant thoughts about the ghosts that might languish in this ancient farmhouse full of personality and lacking the characters who made it vibrant.

The lambing-barn, a mile away from the house and hidden from the roads by ancient trees full of foliage just starting to turn at the corners, ochre and scarlet encroaching on the green like a fire catching. The barn, where they had hidden provisions from Piper, who had gotten into the spirit of what they had considered to be an adventure and foraged and gathered and harvested for them, the way she had since taught Daisy on their journey back home. Where they had snuggled up together and slept in the hay, comforted and secure, and sure the war would never touch them.

Where she and Edmond had come together as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and they were destined to do so. That night played on a loop, sitting in the moonlight as Eddie stared into nothingness, hiding his terror and helplessness in his knitted sweater, finally resting his head against hers when she joined him and his lean warm body relaxed… The warmth and scent of his skin, the pinching sensation and the fullness. The _love_.

She had never known how starved she was before he filled her. If she could live on Edmond, she would.

He had sustained her. Kept her going. Kept her sane in the quiet; and warm in the dark. She had told him things in her dreams that she would never, ever breathe to Piper. Just the thought of him calmed her.

The thought of him pushed her that bit farther, but what was a mile cross-country after what she and Piper had been through? Urgency overpowered caution for the first time, the familiar surroundings and sense of security in their memories of comfort in this place overpowering all they had learned during their journey back here.

Always forging ahead while ordering Piper to stay close behind but not on her heels, Daisy opened the barn door. Sunlight splashed over old hay and the earthen floor, caught the dust-motes swirling like gold in the air that smelled faintly of animals in a nice way, and as her eyes adjusted she froze.

The shot rang out, loudly and far too close to not have every nerve in her body firing adrenaline full-speed, wood splintering a foot from her stomach from the old barn door. She jumped out of her skin, diving back and almost trampling Piper, yelling at her to run.

" _Piper?_ Daisy."

Her heart in her mouth, her stomach disappeared entirely, her bladder threatening to empty itself, Daisy turned, and there he was.

Isaac.

No trace of his glasses glittered on his face as they always had, shrouded in a heavy rain-coat that was too big for him, he was far more gaunt than she had ever seen him, almost unrecognisable, the curls he had inherited from his mother - the only of three children to inherit them - cropped short and wilted from stress and lack of water. The gun looked too large in his hand, incongruous, especially in Isaac's grip: his cheekbones jutted out, and he had the look of a skinny but growing kid who had suddenly lost too much weight.

He was shell-shocked, it didn't take a genius to see it.

His eyes were big as saucers and glazed, red from crying and exhaustion, his face dirty, lips dried and cracked, bruises healing, purplish and green, his ear was cut and like them, he was covered in small thorn scratches, torn skin, bug-bites scratched until they bled and bruises from sleeping on the ground for weeks.

Isaac took one look at Daisy and dropped the gun.

He burst into tears.

And Daisy grabbed him, and he clutched onto her as if he might drown, and she hugged him back, shocked and her eyes burning to feel just how skinny he had become. His frail body shuddered in her skinny bruised arms, and she hugged him as tight as she could, trying to tell him everything she could just with that one hug; that she and Piper were home, that they were safe, that they were together now, until Piper joined them and squeezed them until Daisy thought she might faint from lack of circulation.

It was Jet who broke them apart. A soft, warm lick of Piper's hand and she relinquished her brother for her dog, the faithful sheepdog who had impressed so many of the Land Army with his skill and Piper's soft low whistle. Piper had had so many rough-and-tough Army guys swooning and wistful over her at the farm, treated like the Queen of Sheba… They knew a treasure when they had seen one, and Piper was.

Jet had found his way home just before Isaac, skinny, his fur matted and unkempt, but otherwise unharmed. He leapt right into Piper's arms and the little girl giggled and cooed as she hadn't in months. She clung to Jet, and Isaac clung to Daisy.

They didn't mention Edmond.

* * *

 **A.N.** : Because it was Dink in the book, not Isaac. _Infinity War_ PTSD is still strong with me. And I refuse to believe that Tom Holland is the new Sean Bean, killed in every single film.


	2. Chapter 2

**A.N.** : This was meant to be a _snippet_! I imagine it'll be a few chapters long, but not my usual sixty-chapter standard.

* * *

 **How We Live Now**

 _02_

* * *

For that first afternoon, they returned to the house. Without really speaking, Daisy and Isaac set to work, helping put the furniture back to rights in the living-room, while they silently debated whether or not to take up residence or hide out in the barn where the illusion of safety was strongest, and probably the reality too, while Piper soaked the dirt-crusted dishes in water heated up in an antique kettle over the fireplace in the living-room, tidying up as best she could, searching through the cupboards and larder and the hidey-holes only a family in their own home knew to search, above cupboards and behind the piano, under the cutlery drawer in the sideboard in the posh dining-room and in vintage Tupperware in the garage, in the drawer under Piper's bed and the desk in Isaac's room, gathering supplies.

With at least a few of the ghosts having been made flesh and blood again, the house was the source of previously-forgotten comfort, thick walls and fresh clothes and each other. A place they had once considered safe, and now became that for them again, not relaxing but allowing things to catch up to them.

Isaac was hurt worse than they thought. Already a skinny kid before, the last few months had wrought a change in him that reminded her of age-spotted photographs of Nazi concentration-camps. Now he was deathly thin, more even than her, and covered in nicks and cuts; his raincoat was splattered with someone else's blood and whoever he had taken the gun from had left Isaac with a nasty cut from his neck down his shoulder-blade, and a swollen bruise on his hip the colour of a rotting eggplant.

The ancient living-room became the new centre of the house, the kitchen with its gas-fired Aga forgotten in lieu of the open fireplace where they boiled water to bottle for later just in case the water-butts ran dry, and warmed more to use and have their first hot wash in ages. With the couches pushed back to their proper places, something slipped into place, the house felt more familiar. Piper found the blankets and raided the bookcases stuffed three-deep in Aunt Penn's study and found a deck of playing-cards from Isaac's desk upstairs, jigsaw puzzles, _Bananagrams_ and _Monopoly_. Piper was even sighted sweeping a bright-yellow duster over the piano and side-tables, gazing through the glass of a small curiosity-cabinet full of Aunt Penn's collectible figurines and homemade Mother's Day gifts from her children, fine crystal catching the light and porcelain gleaming, painted with wildflowers Daisy could now name because of Piper.

Piper never asked about her mother, not since confessing that her being a chocolate-monster had frightened her mom off to Oslo. But her longing and grief were plain as day in the reflection as she gazed at those figurines, her mother's treasures gathered amongst things she considered precious - gifts from her children.

Instinctively, without ever having known a mother's love herself, Daisy knew Aunt Penn, wherever she was, would trade every single one of those ornaments and her soul to hear the sound of her children's voices on the end of a phone-call. It was because Piper was a monster for chocolate and a solemn shepherdess, because Isaac was quirky and the animal-whisperer, because Edmond was Edmond and everything that name meant that Penn, wherever she was, took pride in her children. _Loved_ her children as fiercely as they loved each other, and loved her, and now loved Daisy, as she loved them.

When the water was warmed through, Daisy helped Isaac strip off. He seemed too stiff to do much himself, but if he was embarrassed he was most likely too exhausted or numb to react: That was when they saw the bruises, and Piper's face went solemn. He was worse off than they were, and Daisy knew they were pretty bad.

He had stopped crying, and she washed away the tear-marks streaked down his face in the muck, using soft washcloths and a big, clean sponge after, the warm water doing as much for the spirit as for the body, cleaning away the dried blood, muck and debris of hiking through the countryside in all weathers, the warmth permeating through the skin and invigorating him, until his cheeks were no longer ashen. Leaning over the now-empty kitchen sink, she carefully rinsed shampoo out of Isaac's curls with a plastic jug. Forcing him to drink quarts of water helped with his chapped lips; and Piper found a dusty First Aid kit tucked in an obscure corner of the potting-shed and brought out Isaac's _Boy Scouts' Handbook_ , flipping it open to Minor Injuries. Piper tugged both the _Handbook_ and Jet out of the house with her in search of natural remedies in the woods, while Daisy stayed behind with Isaac.

Quietly, she washed him and tended to his wounds. The cut from his neck down his shoulder-blade was jagged and seeping, but not angry, and the antibiotic ointment in the First Aid kit had never been opened; Daisy was no nurse but she cleaned the wound, ignoring Isaac's soft hisses and flinching until she was satisfied it was clean, daubed ointment on it and left it to breathe before taping a bandage over it. Counting every one of his ribs, Daisy tucked a blanket around the nude but clean Isaac, his hair tousled but drying into the curls she remembered, his eyelashes spiked, his eyes no longer as red.

Daisy gave herself a wash, the warm water bliss, cleaning her many cuts and scrapes and bloody bug-bites, wiping away the muck to reveal the bruised skin beneath. She didn't look too closely; and she avoided the mirrors after shocking even herself in the landing. She coated her hair with shampoo, combing it out for the first time in weeks; and she found _toothpaste_. Divinity!

She sat quietly with Isaac while they waited for Piper to reappear, naked, cleaned, and cocooned in blankets that lulled her with thoughts of blissful, deadened sleep, ignoring the pile of neatly folded clean clothes that would take effort to put back on.

It was then she noticed the tears glittering on Isaac's clean, bruised face, felt his desperation and grief. She didn't have to ask why he was crying, or why he was grieving. Edmond wasn't with him. She pulled herself off the couch, shuffled three feet to the other, and sank down beside Isaac. He took even less space on the couch than she remembered, even with the blankets.

"He went back," Isaac gulped, gazing unseeing with tear-filled eyes at the embroidered cushion on the other couch. Bluebells. Edmond had tucked bluebells into the braid Piper insisted on giving her that afternoon they had gone out to see the carpets of blue spreading across the entire woods.

"Back where?" she asked hoarsely, but she knew.

"Gatesfield." The word was whispered, and tears spilled down Isaac's hollow cheeks. "We kn-knew what was g-going to h-h-happen…could feel it'n the - air…" He slurred and choked on his words, his huge eyes turning on her with a glazed kind of intensity; she was the first person he had to have spoken to in days. "We _tried_. They w-wouldn't listen. Had to leave, so - I _made him_ … But we had a fight. _He went back_."

The brothers, so in tune with nature, had felt what was about to happen like the birds that had gone silent and the dogs that had run for shelter moments before the fallout of the nuclear bomb had turned their sunny Perfect Day to ash falling like snow. They had sensed the danger and had tried to convince the people at Gatesfield, with whom they had lived and toiled for weeks, months even. Until something strange happened, and Isaac imposed his considerable will-power over Edmond, forcing him to leave the farm. The brothers had fought, and Edmond had turned back, not satisfied he had done everything in his power to convince the people they had worked beside and befriended that they were in danger and had to evacuate.

Daisy stared, her mind racing. Gatesfield. The foxes. _Ding_. The pervasive stench of death, the lowing of half-dead cows and the massacre of innocent people learning how to farm, women and children younger than Piper zip-tied, heads covered, shot and left for dead to be picked over… The horror of Gatesfield would never be scrubbed from her mind, rats chewing their way out of the rotting innards of dead cows; Ding, covered in shit and half-dead and straining for Piper whom he knew even in that state; carrion picking strips of purplish flesh from the faces of human beings who had been massacred.

Painstakingly examining each and every one of what remained of their faces. The guilt and grief and relief that not a single one was anyone she vaguely or even distinctly recognised.

"He wasn't there."

Suddenly, Isaac seemed more like four than fourteen, big eyes wide and locked on Daisy's face with devastating _hope_ , tears sliding down his face, wanting nothing more than to hear her tell him his big-brother was okay. "How do you know?" he choked.

"I checked their faces."

Isaac blinked at her. Then he realised, and what little colour was in his cheeks faded, and his tears dried up and he blinked rapidly, then started to nod. She didn't have to clarify that she meant she had searched dead bodies to make sure none of them were the boys. He seemed to know what had happened at Gatesfield.

"He wasn't with them, Isaac. I made myself look at _every face_. Neither of you were there." She was glad Piper was outside, gathering comfrey and chamomile and searching to find liquorice and healing unicorn tears for all she knew. She hadn't told Piper everything she had seen at Gatesfield, or in the woods, but Piper had found Dink and the feel of the place and the memory of the stench was enough.

She had shielded Piper from a lot.

Edmond had wanted to keep others alive: Isaac had wanted to keep _Edmond_ alive. Neither of them had been shielded from anything. And she knew without asking that Isaac had seen and done things that could never be forgotten.

They all had. Piper less so, but she had seen Joe gunned down, felt the spatter of his blood warm on her cheeks like tears. Seen Daisy shoot that guy in the heart for touching Piper; they had left the younger one to bleed out when she shot him in the stomach.

The horrible thing was, it didn't keep her up at night because she'd done it; because Daisy would do it again.

And in the pit of her stomach Daisy knew, even if he hadn't been among the dead, Edmond had been at Gatesfield. Had seen all those people zip-tied, bagged and sloppily executed, left to rot and become a feast for foxes.

Because Edmond was a _good_ man and he couldn't live with that on his conscience; Isaac could. But he had lost Edmond.

As someone who had stopped expecting anything, good or bad, she still recognised the dreadful hope filling Isaac's young, tear-stained face. Wrapped up as they were in blankets, all they could do for closeness was lean against each other, Isaac's head resting against hers as his brother's had so long ago in the moonlight. Her eyes burned and he wasn't here, and she cried. She cried with Isaac, Isaac who had wanted to keep his great-hearted introvert brother alive. She had threatened to leave Piper behind; she had never meant it. She couldn't imagine how either brother was feeling - _feeling_ , because she knew, she felt it in her bones: Edmond would find his way home to them.

With every fibre of her being she knew it as fact.

Against ridiculous odds, a nine-year-old and a city-raised anorexic American had hiked across the English countryside, avoiding massacres and gang-rape and poisoning by dubious mushrooms; the skinniest, happiest fourteen-year-old had made it home with a firearm and a few minor injuries, shaken to his core but alive.

Edmond, the oldest and kindest and wisest of them, _had_ to make it home.

He had to.

Anything else was unthinkable.

They heard Piper's gurgling laugh first, the soft gruff bark of Jet, and in the dim half-light of early-evening, bundled up in blankets, they watched the shadow of Piper's skinny form dance across the wall and the open living-room door until she seemed to realise nothing but a hoist was going to shift them from the couch, and she bounded in with Jet, bearing armfuls of muddy potatoes and sticks of rhubarb longer than her legs, wearing a crown of vibrant purple-blue asters and a smile.

It was Piper's turn to wash, and with her quiet, solemn smile she reached up, tenderly resting the wreath of stubbornly-beautiful purple flowers on Daisy's crown before stripping out of her abused clothes that, like Daisy's, like Isaac's, had reached the Do Not Resuscitate stage in their life and would be cremated out in the yard with the rest of the trash they had gathered from the house, evidence of the men who had sequestered this home and then abandoned it. Isaac dozed while Daisy helped Piper wash, rinsing shampoo through Piper's long hair and tenderly combing through the tangles with froths of Aunt Penn's rose-scented soap that evoked the brief but vivid memory of that night Daisy had talked with her mother's sister about this place she loved so much.

Wrapping Piper up in blankets after air-drying in front of the fire crackling in the enormous hearth, Daisy eyed the bloodstains and burs in Jet's coat and thought, That battle could wait another day.

Eventually they dressed, and lit a couple candle stubs to light their way around. They secured the external doors - good old sturdy thick English oak doors that had been designed in the times when highwaymen galloped around the countryside harassing the locals, kind of like now - and pulled the curtains, Isaac's face drawn in an unfamiliar sombre frown of concentration as he plugged any gaps, making sure no light escaped, murmuring about finding a hammer and nails to board up the windows in the rooms they weren't using. He said he was strangely glad for the days becoming shorter, to conceal the smoke coming from the chimney.

With a fire lit and a couple candles glowing, Isaac had on an old pair of glasses and Piper was humming contentedly as they arranged their provisions on the battered old kitchen-table, another piece of ancient oak that must have stood there in the centre of the huge room since the dawn of time. They had examined the maps on the walls full of push-pins, gathering what information they could before plucking everything down, leaving only Aunt Penn's pressed-flowers and Isaac's academic certificates and Piper's paintings and the commemorative plates and antique copper _Jell-O_ moulds and the horseshoes over the door.

Isaac hadn't remembered the food they had hidden from Piper, back before everything began, the rations provided by the Government or whoever: Piper had enjoyed it so much, foraging and gardening and being creative and self-sufficient hunting rabbits and fishing for pink trout, that they hadn't the heart to tell her about the crate that Edmond had hidden away in the lambing-barn. Daisy had recovered it, hidden in the hay and completely untouched. Only the ham had to be thrown away, even Jet wouldn't touch it, but Daisy figured the rats would enjoy a good meal and threw it into the woods away from the barn.

They figured whoever had sequestered their home had left pretty soon after pulling the rug from under their feet, not too worried about the information they left behind tacked and taped to Aunt Penn's ancient kitchen-walls, and no-one had seemed intent on finding and looting the house because there was still food in some of the cupboards, though the refrigerator had long been emptied but for a half-full jar of lemon curd, another of sliced jalapenos, a bottle of _HP_ brown sauce and what Piper called the _heels_ of some cheeses that Mummy got at Waitrose because she liked cheese and biscuits with chutney and pears or figs and sometimes a little glass of port that she let Edmond sip but Piper didn't like because it was yucky.

It was surprising that what they recovered from the kitchen, the pantry and the garage nearly filled the ancient oak table, and Daisy accredited this to the fact the British Army had chosen to sequester a house cluttered up to the eaves; it also helped that Aunt Penn was frazzled by housework where she had laser-point precision with her career, and the house was a mess, truthfully. There were hidey-holes everywhere and things were stored in the unlikeliest places. Three ceramic bowls Isaac excitedly said were Christmas puddings, already cooked, covered in tinfoil; they were so full of alcohol and sugar they would keep for _years_. Large tins of something called _confit_ , the duck they liked from holidaying in France; they just had to open the tins and reheat the meat, which would be succulent and moist, and they could save the fat to cook other things, Piper kept licking her lips at thought. Tins of mixed beans and oxtail soup; tomato passata and jars of Aunt Penn's honey, coconut-milk and curry-paste; hot-cocoa powder and boxes of herbal tea-bags that were Aunt Penn's; bottles of olive-oil, sunflower oil and vinegar and sriracha and chocolate balsamic; a big box of sea salt; tangy Branston pickle and something Piper called piccalilli; evaporated milk Piper said Mummy uses for her _special_ chocolate-cakes; pesto and miso paste; an open bottle of good maple syrup; bags of Italian 00 pasta flour; the Tupperware tubs older than Edmond that contained Self-Raising and Plain flour; baking-powder and boxes of _Atora_ suet Aunt Penn stockpiled before autumn because everyone and their grandmother wanted to get started on Christmas pudding prep; bags of raisins and dried cranberries and walnuts and freeze-dried raspberries from the fairy-cakes Edmond made for Piper's last birthday, bronze-coloured sprinkles and a tub of Betty Crocker chocolate frosting still sealed; black treacle and Lyle's Golden Syrup; black pudding; the last of Aunt Penn's homemade jams, plum-and-amaretto, fruits of the forest, rhubarb-and-ginger and only three jars of her special marmalade; tins of lychees; spitted cherries in kirsch; stock cubes; sliced peaches; a box of oat-cakes, another of bran-flakes; fancy Italian dried mushrooms that made Piper catch Daisy's eye solemnly, remembering but not speaking about Mushroom Night. Aunt Penn's friend had a membership to _Costco_ and Aunt Penn bought all her pasta and rice there, storing it all in the loft above the garage, dozens of untouched bags hidden under a tarpaulin with all the fishing gear and the blow-up kiddie-pool and _toilet-paper_ stacked on top, boxes of _PG Tips_ teabags and jars of instant coffee. Amid the dried pasta, they had found a sack of rice and another of milled oats because Aunt Penn and Edmond had porridge every morning and their favourite was vegetarian chilli, and they found untouched bags of lentils and jars of spices in the cupboards and Piper had the idea to start drying the herbs in Edmond's garden and Isaac thought they might be able to pull together something like Mum's chilli if they went through the cookbooks and Piper got that gleam in her eye Daisy hadn't seen for months, reminding her of their Perfect Day.

To the jars and packets and bottles of hard-cider and beer Mummy got for Edmond and stored in the potting-shed, they added the offerings from the Government that they had hidden away all those weeks ago. What Isaac called a 'crock' of mature Cheddar sealed in wax; a bottle of apple-juice; a rich, chock-full-of-fruit, dark, enormous fruit-cake that stayed perfect and would stay perfect, Isaac said, for months just like Mum's Christmas puds; dried apricots and a box of dates; a bag of oats and a smaller one of flour, a box of salt and tins of corned-beef.

Isaac hadn't eaten in days, making their forced-march starvation rations seem like feasts in comparison. Daisy at least had had Piper with her, the mystical creature born to flit amid the turning foliage collecting edible plants and nuts and blackberries, bringing back confirmation of a relatively untouched potato field and the news that Edmond's vegetable-garden had been left to its own devices and thus was thriving.

After investigating the gardens and the greenhouse, Piper had returned carrying muddy potatoes and stalks of rhubarb as long as her legs that were woody but full of fibre and good and sweet once they had been poached. It was a special occasion, returning home, returning to Isaac; they opened the tin of Ambrosia rice-pudding and heated it up, dividing it between the three of them in bowls painted with blue patterns with sweet, sharp rhubarb on top and it felt like they were gorging on food, but it really wasn't much, but like babies they needed to feed _little_ and _often_ or they'd make themselves ill from the shock of real food.

In the warmth of the living-room, they dozed, until Piper's soft snores joined Jet's and Isaac's glasses sat crooked on his nose where he had fallen asleep, and Daisy blew out the candles rather than waste them, and Daisy instinctively knew it was four a.m. when she woke because it was always bitter, and she raked the embers and put another log on the fire when she got up to use the bathroom because it was an old house and the toilet still worked because of ancient plumbing and the water-tank in the attic and Aunt Penn's foresight in fitting solar-panels.

For a few bleary moments as the embers glowed and fire started to lick at the edges of the log and sparks glittered and amber started to chase away the shadows and warmth relaxed her body again after the chill in the rest of the house, she sat watching Piper and Isaac sleep, curled together under their blankets, Jet grumbling on the hearth where it was warmest.

They were home.

 _Edmond…we're home… We're waiting for you._

 _I'll wait forever_ … _Eddie…_

She drifted off, dreaming of Edmond, and the lambing-barn, and his smile as he watched the hawk that had guided her home.


	3. Chapter 3

**A.N.** : The more I write of this story the more I like writing it! I should probably also state that this story is in no way sponsored by River Cottage cookbooks! I just have a few of them and they seem like the thing Edmond's family would have in their house, you know?

* * *

 **How We Live Now**

 _03_

* * *

Whoever said kids were lazy never met Daisy, Isaac and Piper. They passed their time by surviving: They were determined to live, and between the three of them their willpower would've been astonishing to anyone who didn't know what they had already endured.

Four a.m. was always damp and bitter no matter the time of year but six o'clock in late September was worse, every muscle aching and every bruise and healing bug-bite demanding attention with the birds singing riotously in the trees and Jet's warm wet nose startling her from sleep as he whined, wanting to get out and pee. The others grumbled but climbed out of the cocoon of blankets, of each other, and followed her lead by dressing, pulling their hair into ponytails and it was luxury to put on old jeans and sweaters that wouldn't get ruined, thick socks without a hint of their blood or blister-pus and Wellington boots, arming themselves with tools from the potting-shed, and before they entertained the idea of breakfast they had been out into Edmond's garden examining the contents of the raised beds and the greenhouse and sectioning off the small patches they would leave for seeds for next year, and filling the wheelbarrow with potatoes from the field while Piper dashed about filling a wicker basket with bilberries - she said Daisy might know them as huckleberries, from _Huckleberry Finn_ \- blackberries, watercress from the running river and more sweet chestnuts than they knew what to do with and they found the fishing gear and a hint of Isaac's old enthusiasm ghosted across his face at the thought of fresh fish, and he found the snares Edmond had set for the rabbits they had caught so long ago.

Somehow Jet managed to corral six skinny, scatter-brained hens who had been loose in the meadow, and it was the highlight of their return, after Isaac of course, that Piper was reunited with _her girls_. With their nests in the barn but left to roam, organic and free-range and all that, the girls had been left to their own devices. None of the other animals remained in the barn but the Army must've forgotten about the girls before they disappeared and so, there they were - Hazel and Petal and Daphne and Penelope and Lily and Scary Spice. Did this mean the Army had recently left the farm, if the girls were still going strong? Isaac just sighed that Nature found a way and scattered some feed and the mealworms Piper said were like _Ferrero Rocher_ to them and there was no sign of a cockerel so they had to assume any eggs they were laying weren't fertilised and were fine to eat. If they were cooked they wouldn't get salmonella, right? The first few eggs they found and cooked had vibrant orange yolks and Isaac said the girls had probably been finding and eating baby rats, which made Piper crinkle her nose the same way her brother sometimes did but the eggs were rich and delicious and the scrambled-eggs they had that day were vivid orange and the best thing Daisy had eaten since the poached pink trout on their Perfect Day.

They found the root-cellar where in olden times they used to store potatoes and carrots and parsnips and turnips and Swedes and onions and garlic, and apples. There were eating-apples and an old gnarled Bramley-apple tree which meant they were cooking apples, and the eating-apples were ready and some had already fallen off the branches but the cooking-apples weren't ready yet, and they laughed so hard they cried and their stomachs hurt when Piper bit into a plum and got half a maggot for the protein. They filled buckets with plums and sorted through them, Isaac saying that the unblemished ones would be safe to eat because it meant the flies hadn't gotten to them, and there were some bags of jam sugar in the garage which meant they could make their own jam if they could find Mum's recipe. There was even a well-established fig tree and Isaac said those were the best for fibre, even better than rhubarb, just don't eat too many in one go, he had grinned, or they'd have the adverse effect and the plumbing was dubious in the house at best.

Even if he wasn't with them in body yet, in spirit Edmond was there, as eldest brother he had ensured his siblings were provided for before they'd ever realised war was so imminent, before the idea of their separation had ever entered into their worst nightmares: he had planted beets and bulb fennel and cauliflower and broccoli, peas and spinach, carrots and parsnips and tomatoes and cabbages, onions and garlic and zucchini and eggplant and squashes. The Army guys had to be sore to leave this all behind, but Isaac wondered aloud if they had even bothered to look in on the gardens. He said they were lucky to have had steady, gentle rains and not harsh sun then dramatic storms, or the plants would've been in as good a condition as the humans were. But, like all the nature Daisy had seen, where Man was floundering Nature thrived.

Piper sighed that David Attenborough would be happy: when Man thrived, Nature suffered. Without electricity and generators and cars and the council's vicious hedge-trimmers and pollutants - they didn't count nuclear radiation because, well, war couldn't last forever, nobody wanted mutually-assured destruction for the sake of making a point - Daisy had seen with her own eyes how Nature was celebrating.

Isaac and Piper knew exactly what to do to look after the plants, harvesting the crops that had been left to thrive without interference. Ironically, Isaac said, it was probably the best year Edmond had ever had for harvesting. They had learned from watching and helping Edmond, who had watched a television-programme called _Gardeners' World_ avidly and attended an agricultural sixth-form college nearby to sit his A-Levels and definitely had green fingers, not just the thumb.

All three of them had become used to the aching muscles and the backbreaking work of meticulously tending to crops, had picked up things on the farms to add to the siblings' already considerable knowledge and Piper was gathering up lavender as a bug-deterrent and Isaac donned a funny hat with a veil to take a peek at Aunt Penn's beehives - honey was medicinal as well as delicious and as soon as the tube of ointment ran out they would be wishing for more jars of the stuff, which was a natural antibiotic. They had to harvest as much as they could before they bound the hives shut for the winter to protect the honeybees, and they spent nearly a week harvesting and jarring honey, while Piper hauled wicker basketfuls of crab-apples and hazelnuts home and spent her evenings peeling them and looking through cookbooks to find crab-apple recipes.

Daisy, who had always sucked at Math, was put in charge by unanimous unspoken agreement of planning the food rationing. Armed with a pencil and one of Aunt Penn's notepads she sat at the kitchen table while Piper brewed spiced apple tea and Isaac had gone fishing because it was cold and drizzly and perfect for fishing, and catalogued everything they had, down to the last tin of anchovies and cinnamon sticks. Aunt Penn had an old set of weighing-scales with brass weights that looked like chess-pieces and Daisy filled a few hours figuring out how long the sacks of rice and oats and pasta would last, dividing each sack by the grams in a single ration times four - always counting in Edmond - trying to figure out how many weeks or months they could make everything last. The sums hurt her head and Daisy knew she should apologise to her Math teachers over the years but could they have at least taught her something useful? She wondered why they didn't teach budgeting, cooking and wartime survival skills. They might be living off plain boiled pasta and rice but it would be something and Piper was already planning to cook some onions and red bell-peppers over the fire to put on their jacket-potatoes cooked in the embers, and she thought maybe if they cooked the jars of passata with onions and fresh zucchini - she called them _courgettes_ \- and eggplants - _aubergines_ \- they could make everything go further and jar and seal the lot so they'd have stuff to eat over winter. Because Aunt Penn had a habit of selling her honey and homemade chutneys and jams for the benefit of the church at the village fête every June, there were boxes of unused, clean jam-jars in the garage and they just had to figure out how to sterilise the jars before they used them because Mummy usually cooked them in the Aga first but Sally usually helped her with the jars while they chatted in the evenings over a glass of red wine.

And maybe if they stored the rest of the vegetables in the coldest part of the garage in airtight Tupperware they might last until winter, when they'd really need fresh vegetables. Daisy doubted it but didn't think it would hurt to try and there were only so many fresh vegetables three scrawny kids could eat anyway but it seemed criminal and selfish to waste anything now, and when their bodies grew too exhausted to move they each grabbed armfuls of Aunt Penn's cookbooks and sat at the kitchen-table searching out recipes for soups, stews and casseroles.

Piper asked, did curried rabbit sound good?

She bookmarked a recipe for a chunky winter vegetable soup with tarragon - Piper said that was growing in the garden - and another for fish chowder she figured they could adapt if Isaac continued to bring home fish. She had also found a recipe and they had everything but the lemon to cook _trout en papillote_ with chunks of potato and slices of fresh fennel and any vegetables they wanted all wrapped up in greaseproof paper - Aunt Penn had two unopened boxes from _Costco_ in the cupboard along with Ziploc bags, cling-film and two boxes of 200 metres of tinfoil - but Daisy figured they weren't used to full meals yet and would probably get sick if they suddenly produced a gourmet dinner.

Still, Piper had put the potatoes in the embers of the fire in the living-room and had cut up an onion and a red pepper and runner-beans and sighed that she wished they had some butter, but Daisy left her to it, with her apple tea and _Mary Berry_ cookbooks full of owl post-it notes and the memory of better days and helped Isaac set up the old grill in the yard to cook the trout on rather than fry fish inside where they were sleeping, and Jet didn't seem to mind that his dinner consisted of dry dog-food and the heads of two fish, and Isaac was clearly impressed that Daisy helped clean, gut and fillet the fish, though her hands shimmered with fish-scales for days no matter how many potatoes she pulled from the soil and how often she scrubbed her hands with a nail-brush.

Sitting at the table felt like a luxury, but they learned the lesson quickly that in the shorter days of approaching autumn, they were best to eat their main meal early rather than waste the candles they didn't have to spare, and by the time they had all eaten their way through a baked potato with Piper's fried onions and slightly-charred red bell-peppers and their portion of the two trout, they were too exhausted to keep their eyes open, falling asleep on the couches again, cuddled up together. It was called the _living-room_ , after all.

It was monumental that Daisy's entire world now revolved around food: Where to find it, how to cook it, and if not, how to store it, and how best to make sure it lasted. It seemed stupid even to her to want to be thin when everyone else was starving; for a girl who concerted all her considerable will-power into not eating, everything about every waking hour became about food. And food had somehow become inexplicably intertwined with Edmond and home and Piper and Isaac and survival and their Perfect Day and the lambing-barn and the summer before everything happened when she was coaxed to try fire-toasted marshmallows and such exotic cuisine as fried rabbit with spaghetti hoops and fresh pink trout which was more delicious than anything else in the world, and the ache in her bones and the alien sense of satisfaction from tending to the earth and Edmond's garden as she learned beekeeping and jam-making and how to preserve French beans and jar tomatoes and make jam was wonderful.

Without saying it aloud they all acknowledged that sometime between now and the last time they had seen each other, all three of them had become adults. Gone were the happy-go-lucky whimsical days of fishing and swimming and prancing about across the common amid the curious cows while Piper wove daisy-chains and the boys played tug-of-war with Jet: They were memories.

In days, through necessity and their willpower alone, they became Farmers. They were up at what Isaac called 'sparrow fart' and traipsing with eyes still half-closed in the dawn light to let Jet out and scatter some feed and see if the girls had laid any eggs, check the snares for rabbits and water the plants because the days were still warm and they hadn't had much rain, except at seven p.m. one day that lasted until the water-butt filled again and the buckets they laid out in the yard especially at the first rumble of storm-clouds. Isaac was diligent in planting autumn crops, guessing at the date of the first frost, because they would need winter vegetables and it seemed to distract Isaac from his dark thoughts and anxiety about Edmond when he was sowing seeds and setting aside potatoes to grow from in trash-bags full of soil; and all three of them were out in Edmond's garden every day, bringing in the harvest. They used whatever fresh vegetables couldn't be kept and Piper found a huge jug of _Costco_ olive-oil she thought they could use to roast and then jar peppers, but Isaac thought they were a different kind of pepper and anyway, jarring cooked tomatoes would be more useful because Mum always had jars of tinned tomatoes in the cupboard and they used tomatoes as a base for practically everything. They spent an afternoon just shelling peas, because they could be dried and then added to soups and stews, and Isaac had told them that the Aga was powered by fire not gas and so it was lit and maintained and they made use of the kitchen as well as the living-room now and sometimes Jet would stay with Daisy in the kitchen, guarding the door and keeping warm by the range, and Isaac was confident they would snare a rabbit soon, and maybe if he could figure out how, they could trap a few instead of snaring and killing them outright because then they could breed them and have baby bunny stew and Piper threw an onion at him for that but it was a sensible idea, Daisy told him, because the meat they got from the chickens wouldn't last long if they stopped laying and they had to be eaten, but they were still young chickens, only just having started laying this spring, so Isaac thought they had a little while yet.

They needed firewood to maintain the stove and Isaac recovered Edmond's yellow wood-axe from the lambing-barn and they each got stronger taking their turn to chop firewood, stacking it in the utility-room as high as they could, and when that was full, under the lean-to built against the greenhouse with a tarpaulin over it to protect it from the elements. Edmond had made splitting logs seem effortless; she could have watched his arm-muscles ripple for hours, but it was a different thing trying to do it herself when Daisy had no experience and even less muscle, though it got easier as the weeks went on.

The Aga running off firewood changed a lot for them, and so did the discovery that Aunt Penn's investment in solar panels and a secure power supply gave them enough power to flush the toilets and even plug in the immersion stick-blender that opened up Daisy's soup-making world exponentially. Aunt Penn was an expert, after all; why _wouldn't_ she have made precautions in the event of global crises that wiped out the power-grids on a national level? They spent an afternoon figuring out how the solar panels and the closed circuit system worked and with a torch in his mouth, Isaac clambered up to find the fuse-box in the high cupboard in the utility-room, and disconnected most of the rooms, leaving only the kitchen and the downstairs cloak-room powered, because all they truly needed was a flushing toilet and enough power for Daisy to blend the day's soup if they wanted, though Daisy was reluctant to use the appliances, and anyway, they had no bread to toast and they boiled water just fine on the Aga. Isaac, who was better with the tinderbox than either Daisy or Piper, and was always up first to let Jet out, had assumed the daily task of lighting the stove. By the time they had returned from their morning chores, the oven was hot and the kitchen deliciously warm, and even if their daily ration of porridge was made with water not milk or better yet cream, they added chunks of softened apple and a pinch of cinnamon and Daisy's favourite was fresh blackberries simmered on the stove until juice started to leak out, and they were learning that hard-work and fresh air built muscle and stamina, and they hadn't yet had a bad night's sleep.

If the girls had laid eggs, Isaac showed his prowess at making omelettes, and with the fruits of Edmond's labours in the garden, and Piper's diligence with the raised bed full of herbs, even Isaac was no longer morally opposed to eating vegetables when they had omelettes full of herbs and peppers and zucchini and shallots and spinach, and sometimes they had Spanish omelette for dinner to change things up, which was finely sliced potatoes and sometimes _spring-onions_ \- scallions to Daisy - cooked in the egg and was filling, and Piper adapted a recipe for stuffed peppers with a dusty bag of quinoa Isaac laughed was from Mum's gluten-free phase that had lasted until Sally their au-pair made banana-and-chocolate-chip muffins, and most importantly they had discovered _soup_. Leek and potato was a solid recipe; but they had a heel of stinky blue cheese leftover and Daisy's first attempt at following a recipe for broccoli-and-Stilton soup was a resounding success on the first truly cold October day and it was thick and creamy and good and the baked-potatoes they had with the soup made it almost seem like they had hot fresh bread with it, and to conserve the potatoes she learned that adding one, grated, to any pot of soup made it thicken if she mashed it a little bit as it cooked, and her favourite soup was a thick one made of red peppers, sweet potatoes, red lentils and onion, chopped up into tiny bits to make blending it up easier so it was thick and kept them going even as they toiled in the rain. She was always dubious about plugging in the stick-blender because she didn't know how long or if the power would last but the results when she produced a pot of vivid-green watercress soup were worth it. They made minestrone using whatever fresh vegetables they had to hand and a handful of pasta and a drizzle of pesto and after covering the pot and leaving it in the cold larder it kept for several days, so they hadn't wasted anything, and it was good to know the larder worked just as well now as it had for the early farmers who had built the house and farmed the land originally and had no concept of electricity or campylobacter virus and salmonella but at least had had access to a market in the village for things like flour and string and candles.

Daisy got bold with cooking. One day, she made potato and pea curry and they had it with a little bit of fluffy rice each and cilantro and it was punchy and flavourful and made a change from what they had been eating and it made use of the spices Piper was dubious about. She also made paprika rice with tomatoes and herbs and roasted butternut squash and the whole dish was the same colour as Piper's hair and made her grin and was pretty good refried for breakfast with an egg after they finished their morning chores.

Piper had discovered Edmond's collection of _River Cottage Handbooks_ , a series of small hardback books devoted to the Veg Patch and Hedgerow foraging and Fish and Preserves and Herbs, handing them to Daisy with such solemn ceremony that Daisy's chest cramped, and one day while Jet followed his nose to a neighbouring farm - armed with Isaac's gun and the promise not to do anything stupid - Daisy made fish stock from scratch. The stock itself was the richest thing she had tasted in ages and warmed her from the belly out to her fingertips and toes, and she made it into a fish stew with potatoes and carrots and onions and herbs and Piper's smile made the hours of hard work worth it, even if it was sad that it seemed like their neighbours had abandoned the farm. It didn't have the same feel as Gatesfield, Piper told her, and Isaac was quiet most of the night because of Piper's innocent observation, and didn't feel like reading _The Hobbit_ aloud as he had the last couple nights.

The next day they'd had fried fish with 'mock-creamed' leeks and peas and fennel and thinly-sliced potatoes poached in a little leftover fish broth, and Daisy had made the fish special by giving it a faint dusting of flour before cooking it in olive-oil, and Isaac said it was _almost_ like fish-and-chips only it was better and Daisy grinned, blushing at the tiny knowing smile on Isaac's face when she started talking excitedly about the dusty lemon-shaped plastic bottle of lemon-juice she had found in a random drawer in the kitchen, and how the lemon-juice brought out the flavour of the fish and the fennel.

Daisy, who had set her astonishing willpower to not eating, had become a _foodie_. While the rest of the world learned how to starve, she had finally rediscovered her appetite, and a previously-unheard of passion for cooking.

She was keeping Isaac and Piper alive: What could be better than that?

The next day was one of the best in weeks because Piper and Isaac returned from the neighbouring farm, leaping and skipping and laughing as Jet tenderly but sternly shepherded a wraithlike goat and a painfully-slow pig to the barn, two little goat kids in Piper's arms and three piglets in the wheelbarrow Isaac was pushing with a couple of hens and a bag of feed, more piglets squealing and lolloping after Piper and a lamb bleated softly at Isaac's side, bumping his leg. The pig had to weigh five-hundred pounds and Daisy just stared, figuring the Animal Whisperers whose unknown father must've been some kind of pagan nature deity or something must have coaxed and charmed her to the farm with the promises of luxury and long life, because how else could scarecrow-skinny Isaac and a nine-year-old girl have corralled a stubborn five-hundred-pound pig? Isaac said the pig was a sow, and was there anything in Edmond's _River Cottage_ books about butchering pigs and making sausages? Because he'd give his left ear for toad-in-the-hole with gravy, although Daisy didn't know what that was and when Piper explained, Daisy thought an egg-and-flour based batter and sausages were a little beyond their means.

Isaac said the pigs had survived because they ate _anything_ and Piper averted her gaze and Daisy knew not to ask but the piglets were adorable with their dark eyes and curly tails and even if she had liked bacon before Daisy couldn't bear the idea of it when she cuddled a piglet in her arms. It didn't help that on their walk back, as Jet expertly shepherded the abandoned half-starved animals down the lane, Piper had named the piglets (gender regardless) - Flora, Delilah, Maisie, Grace, Arthur, Alfred, Dougal and Mrs Weasley. The mother-goat bleated and had already fallen in love with Piper and the baby goats - _kids_ \- were probably the healthiest out of everyone on the farm and _so cute_ and one of them liked Daisy and licked her hand and bumped against her leg and she was given the honour of naming them by Piper who approved of Billie and Beth, and Piper was excited to possibly start making cheese, and Daisy thought about a restaurant near her dad's apartment in Manhattan where the speciality was goat curry, and Isaac crinkled his nose the way he used to, wondering what fresh goat's milk tasted like. They'd find out when they had a proper pot of tea, Daisy said, and she felt like a farmer's wife watching her excited children from the kitchen-door with her apron on and a cup of herb tea warming her hands as they lured the goats and the sow to the barn to find their new home with the hens while Isaac petted Sheba, the lamb Piper said was imperious, and the new hens Lottie and Modest introduced themselves to Piper's girls, the piglets were returned to their mother and Piper wanted Daisy to read _Fantastic Mr Fox_ to them after dinner in front of the fire and Isaac did some of the voices and Piper smiled, glittery-eyed, cuddling clean and tidy Jet and sucked her thumb like she only did when she was content.

A pang shot through Daisy as she let the book fall into her lap, childlike handwriting in the overleaf catching her attention and declaring _This book belongs to Edmond, Age 7_ but _I Stole It, Love from Isaac, 9 years old_ and elegant handwriting that said _I, Mummy, officially and irrevocably bequeath this book to Piper_ in such a decisive manner Daisy could practically hear her firm-but-fair Aunt's voice in her head, and she could see Aunt Penn's gentle, distracted smile in the firelight as she said it. As the others dozed and the fire died down to embers Daisy sat, tracing seven-year-old Edmond's handwriting, a lump in her throat, nothing to take the edge off the pain of thinking about Edmond, that he had missed the kind of day that felt like _before_.

He wasn't with them, and nobody said it because they were all thinking it, but truthfully they were all too busy during the daylight hours, and Edmond _would_ make it home when he could.

Daisy was home, and with his brother and sister, and she had to believe that he would think that was enough, that that was…the _best_ thing, next to him being home with them too.

As the days got shorter, they started to heal, physically, and though they were all still brittle and thin they were healthier, and slowly their bodies were changing, skinniness somehow turning into lean muscle, even Isaac's scrawny bird-arms, pushing around wheelbarrows and bending over crops, through trial and error learning to be true farmers, milking a goat and letting the kids learn to forage, and letting the stubborn sow grunt and bask in a pen Isaac spent nearly a week building while the piglets ran amok and Jet gave the humans a look that said, Oh, you expect _me_ to round them up again, do you? Sheba seemed to think she was a sheepdog and followed Jet everywhere, Modest and Lottie turned out to be good layers, and Isaac blushed and said he had identified boys amongst the sow's litter so they should be able to breed them unless there was some kind of, in his words, Targaryen-madness pig-incest problem, and Piper was happy because the kids were girls and Mummy's book on cheese-making says that goat's milk with boy goats nearby affected the taste of the milk and made it more sour and strong but they should have lovely milk from Meg and she seemed used to being milked, but they had a quiet afternoon reflecting on why the animals had been left behind and if the farm had been sequestered like their home and did their neighbours even know the animals had been abandoned?

The animals opened up their world in several ways but it also meant a lot more hard work, tending to them, and Daisy and Isaac and Piper spent several days guiding wheelbarrows to and from their neighbour's farm bringing back fodder and feed for the animals to overwinter them. Moving one bale of hay from their neighbour's barn took a lot of patience, until Isaac found a wheeled flatbed trolley, which made transport easier but they tended to overload it and that caused problems on the way back with things falling off, so it still took just as long to get home but at least they had chaff and grains and pig pellets and their neighbours had apparently been big into making their own goat's milk soap to sell at the village fête and Isaac found a cupboard of it, as well as Persil non-bio powder so they could wash their clothes. One afternoon, Jet corralled Isaac and Daisy to the farmhouse, which had seen better days, but in one of the rooms Piper had discovered a large cat and her two kittens, one ginger and one black as midnight. Isaac said the cats would be good to keep around the farm to hunt rats and a nest was made in one of the wheelbarrows; they made it home before the heavens opened, and Jet welcomed the occupants, letting the kittens stagger unsteadily around and over him and cuddle up to him while Queen Victoria with her pristine white gloves prowled the house, flicking her tail, familiarising herself and deciding she would be Isaac's new caretaker and followed him everywhere. The kittens were named by Isaac, Eyes-in-the-Dark who had big flashing green eyes, and Apricot, whose little face always seemed to be smiling, and who had glommed on to Daisy like she was her real mommy and liked nothing better than curling in Daisy's lap in the evenings, purring softly.

But the cats did earn their keep, and usually they could see a ginger blur or a spot of black fur and Queen Victoria teaching her children how to pounce, and they were satisfied to catch birds and mice and baby rats, as Isaac had guessed, and never came begging for scraps, and they didn't bring gifts back to the kitchen either because what they caught was what they ate. Their mother was a farmyard cat and taught her babies well, possibly she even gave Billie and Beth a few pointers because the goat-kids were taking to foraging too, and were already bleating to be let out before Isaac had his Wellies on to let them out of the barn to run and dick about in the meadow while Jet looked on like a devoted nanny and scented the air for trouble, all the smells of the neighbourhood drifting past his nose.

Their lifestyle had altered drastically from when Daisy first arrived here. Now, they rose with the birds and tended to the animals while the Aga warmed and then returned to have a small breakfast; Daisy did most of the cooking but the others helped, and they learned from each other, and Daisy hunted for eggs while Piper took flight in the woods foraging for treats, and Daisy didn't ask why Isaac felt it necessary to take his gun when he went fishing, but as long as they never heard a shot she wasn't worried, and he stuck to the parts of their river that only locals would know about and were out of the open. And when the weather was too bad to do anything but make sure the animals had feed and water in the barn, they had devoted their mornings to cooking: they learned to preserve vegetables and dried fresh peas and strung up onions like the stereotypical French guy with a striped shirt and sharp moustache, they jarred cooked tomatoes and made chutneys. Early on, before the fruit could turn, they made blackberry-and-apple jam and plum jam and were confident but realistic about the outcomes and they did what they had watched Aunt Penn do for ages with the wrinkle test on a cold saucer and put the jam-jars in the oven to sterilise them and Isaac had to stick his arm in the water-butt until his fingertips pruned because he'd burned his hand on the baking-tray they had used to arrange the jars and they had no running water or ice-packs to soothe the burned skin, but it wasn't major and his palm had a two-inch strip of angry pink skin for days, and it hurt but the _Boy Scouts' Handbook_ said that was a good; if a burn didn't hurt was when they had to worry, and they all learned to take precautions and not dick about around the stove, which became Daisy's domain because she was so diligent and patient and Isaac laughed that she had learned its secrets the way they knew animals. An old stove like an Aga had _character_ and had to be treated with respect; different doors opened and they got different results trying to cook things in different places and Piper wasn't allowed near it when Daisy was cooking on the hobs. Aunt Penn's cookbooks were godsends, and especially Edmond's book called _Preserves_ , and the pantry had soon started to fill with jarred cooked tomatoes, jam and minestrone soup, jarred vegetables for the winter, chutneys and piccalilli, using the ingredients the Army had ignored because they weren't tinned beans and tomato soup and therefore written off as useless.

But necessity was the mother of invention, and three kids with unlimited time and nothing better to do proved to be ingenious.

Proving once again that they were Adults Now, Isaac had spent a good hour every day amongst his other chores building store bins for the onions, red-onions, horseradish, shallots and other root vegetables they had been picking. They couldn't feed an army but they would do well on vegetables over the winter and Isaac had success catching a rabbit but needed to put more thought into traps so they could breed rabbits for meat. One morning when their chores were done, the weather was too pretty not to and they put on hiking-boots and gathered walking-sticks and wicker baskets and went a-foraging like they had been doing it for years. Daisy made wild garlic pesto from pignuts and wild garlic leaves and the last of the parmesan in the refrigerator, and it was pretty good, drizzled on top of the smooth butternut-squash soup Daisy made for dinner a few days later.

They also started thinking ahead because the implications of the girls not laying as many eggs meant winter was on its way and they would soon have limited fresh veg and Isaac spent a lot of time in the greenhouse, and tending to the cabbages and spinach and storing the crops, and they made several trips to the neighbour's farm because they had squashes and rare pumpkins growing and cauliflower and it was a shame to waste it all and Isaac had previously picked Giant Puffballs in the field, which were a type of mushroom and Isaac made them laugh telling a story about how he and Edmond had once scaled a fence to pick a white duck. Isaac was a keen mushroom-forager and had more experience than Piper, who admitted quietly on one of their foraging hikes about Mushroom Night, but Isaac said they weren't dead and that was what mattered, and Mr Bowen their neighbour had been a keen grower of mushrooms - he grew them in a dank corner of an old barn, and Isaac had written an essay on how Mr Bowen's granddad had grown mushrooms in the same way during the War and they got the idea that they could grow mushrooms too, transporting a dead log practically groaning from all of the mushrooms growing on it, back to the house in a wheelbarrow.

Daisy was getting better and better at not just cooking but enjoying what she made for them, and Piper was learning from her, and Isaac had his animals and was happy looking after them while their wood-pixie continued to hone her foraging skills, and Edmond had a _Cheeses_ book and Aunt Penn had a few books on cheese-making and Daisy got the sense that Aunt Penn dove headfirst and fully-committed into projects and hobbies such as jamming, beekeeping and cheese-making with a furious passion and then realised she had three children and an intense career so everything she had invested money in would never pay off because she didn't have the _time_ to enjoy it, but she had left behind a house cluttered with everything her children would need to take up the hobbies themselves, including the memories of her passion and the skills she had unknowingly taught them simply through doing it, and having curious children who consumed knowledge and read more than any kids Daisy had ever met and had liked to sit in the kitchen with a cup of tea watching Mummy in her apron as she made jam while arguing on the phone with Other Experts.

Piper became a _caseiculturist_ \- a cheese-maker. If being a child-prodigy shepherdess wasn't her true calling, she could fall back on making the creamiest, softest goat's cheeses ever created. The first ball of cheese was the size of a softball and was soft, crumbly and creamy, slightly tangy and almost sweet all at once, and didn't smell that much of goat at all.

The morning Piper said the first cheese was ready to eat, and she had taste-tested it and it was _good_ ,they decided to commemorate the event. After tending to the animals, Isaac went fishing, bringing back one fat pink trout, and Daisy cooked it in a greaseproof-paper parcel with the last of the bell peppers, red-onion, fennel, finely-sliced potatoes, broccoli florets and drizzles of pesto. After dinner, Piper brought out the goat's cheese. They opened a packet of _Nairn's_ oatcakes, and had the cheese with the last of the fresh blackberries from the thatch out by the meadow.

Meg was prolific and was milked twice a day, morning and night; her kids were weaned and enjoyed foraging, but Piper kept milking her and Meg kept producing, and Piper kept making cheese, getting more confident in her success and sometimes adding herbs or rolling the log-shaped cheeses in them or forming small, dainty rounds to mature for more than ten days. She was delighted by her cheese and dedicated to her twice-daily tasks of milking Meg and properly storing the milk until she could make another cheese.

Daisy made chestnut flour. Isaac, a prolific reader just like Edmond and Daisy, told her that in Olden Days chestnut flour was basically poor-man's flour. It was gluten-free and the finished product was a little coarser than what was in the Tupperware tubs but with the staggering quantity of sweet chestnuts Piper had harvested from the trees on their neighbour's farm, all the time and effort put into it - the chestnuts had to be boiled and peeled, then cooled, then grated in a Mouli grater then cooked in the oven and then the flakes had to be blended, and she was glad they had a blender and enough power to finely mill everything into a powder - into _flour_ \- rather than resort to the old-school pestle and mortar on the mantelpiece over the Aga. But they had a decent weight of chestnut flour when Daisy was finally finished and considering it had all come from foraging, that was pretty cool, and Piper found a recipe in Edmond's _Hedgerow_ book for chestnut pancakes, and Daisy figured if they used half-chestnut and half regular flour they could make both stretch and still enjoy the novelty of having made chestnut pancakes literally from the hedgerow to the dinner-table.

There were zero food-miles in them and everything was organic! Nuclear detonations may be going off all over the world but in their tiny forgotten postage-stamp of it, they refused pesticides and aggressive farming and disdained battery chickens.

Several nights in a row Daisy saw Piper carefully slide the _Mushrooms_ book from the collection of Edmond's _River_ _Cottage_ books with that serious solemn look on her face that all of the siblings got when they were reading, totally consumed, and one dawn set out with Isaac and a gnarled walking-stick each, a wicker basket and Jet, in search of the meadow by the blackberry patch which was overgrown with mushrooms, and after double- and triple-checking the harvest in Edmond's book and several others from Aunt Penn's library, Daisy made them a creamy chestnut-and-mushroom pie topped with herby mashed potatoes baked in the Aga and it was insanely good, and they lit the candles for a little while that evening and sipped herb tea and Piper played with the kittens while Isaac read Edmond's copy of _Pigs & Pork: River Cottage Handbook No. 14_ and Daisy sat at the upright piano trying to remember what she had rarely practiced at twelve when she'd had piano lessons, but the music-books weren't too difficult and her fingers seemed to remember even if her brain didn't, and she started from Middle C and found the children's music-theory books and went from there.

When they weren't eating, they were preparing their meals, or preparing food for storing. They had made chutneys and jarred vegetables and the root-cellars were stuffed and Isaac had collected seeds and Daisy was drying wild mushrooms to keep and making mushroom stock for surprisingly rich pasta dishes, or making fish stock with the remains of their dinners, and they all spent a lot of time in the garden, raking the leaves to add to the compost and dividing rhubarb and moving 'tender' plants into the greenhouse, cutting back perennials and dividing herbaceous ones - Isaac had to point out which were which to Daisy, who would've been more at home on Mars than in a working vegetable garden. They spent a good amount of time collecting and organising seeds for the next year, and treating the soil - raking, hoeing and turning it with compost - sowing seeds in the utility-room where it was warmer; they harvested the last of the apples and pears and planted spring cabbages, pruned the climbing roses all over the front of the house, and Isaac found the old push-lawnmower and went around the lawn.

Somehow along the way, they had started not just surviving but _enjoying_ themselves. It was quiet and natural and not obvious, and Daisy never even realised it except when she saw Piper's relaxed smile or the intensity in Isaac's eyes as his glasses flashed in the firelight, his nose in a book, Eyes-in-the-Dark scattering the hotels across the _Monopoly_ board and she caught Piper humming along to the familiar songs Daisy was slowly but steadily teaching herself on the piano. They adjusted to their new lifestyle of farm-work, rising early and going to bed early but as they continued to work and got stronger, they had started not just collapsing with exhaustion after eating dinner like zombies, but enthusiastic about their meal and looking forward to working on a jigsaw puzzle before they changed into their pyjamas and brought out the blankets and pillows and went to bed with the firelight soothing to them and the owls hooting when it wasn't raining, and sometimes when Jet needed to go out, Daisy poured herself an apple tea from the teapot that was always filled with the stuff Piper made and Apricot would cuddle in the crook of her arm, purring loudly, and they would stand in the yard with Isaac staring up at the full bright moon. She knew sometimes he would go outside on clear nights, under the guise of letting Jet out or Queen Victoria in, hoping to see Edmond walking or even limping or dragging himself down the lane that was becoming increasingly overgrown.

He didn't, and the days passing turned into weeks, and they were becoming strong and lean and sometimes saw smoke billowing across the horizon when they walked up Hawk's Hill, as Daisy had renamed it, from the nearest town and even farther afield and slowly the lush greens she associated eternally with English summers faded, turning to eye-catching ochres and scarlet and deep purples, before the first storm blew most of the dead foliage from the branches and they woke to a drearier world of crisp greys and hazy lavenders, fog shrouding the mornings, eerily beautiful and wistful and reminding her of miserable Classic novels she had been reading in the evenings - _Wuthering Heights_ and _Northanger Abbey_ and _Frankenstein_ but _Doctor Zhivago_ was wonderful and _War and Peace_ , _The Age of Innocence_ and _Poldark_ were epic, and Piper giggled at the names of Dickens' characters and _Great Expectations_ was heart-breaking. She read _The Secret Garden_ and _The Wind in the Willows_ to remember warmth and lazy Perfect Days and to remind herself what it felt to be hopeful, and Piper read the entire Harry Potter series aloud after Isaac finished, _finally_ , the entire _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy after _The_ _Hobbit_ and when Daisy had finished reading them _Gone With the Wind_ aloud Isaac had already decided on _A Song of Ice and Fire_.

Daisy's English teachers would never have guessed that it would take World War III for her to start reading Tolstoy, Shakespeare and Hemingway by choice - and what was more, _enjoy_ them. Her cousins were avid readers, had been home-schooled, and Aunt Penn apparently had earned enough to allow her children to go on book-sprees at the bookstore _Waterstones_ , and there were books stuffed _everywhere_ and Daisy could tell who had chosen the book in the store just by the genre. Aunt Penn had old copies of every Agatha Christie book and Isaac had them crying with laughter as he read out P G Wodehouse's _Jeeves_ books, the shell-shocked diligence of Isaac starting to melt into his characteristic warmth and enthusiasm and humour.

 _King Lear_ broke her heart.

The sweetest, saddest story she had read in ages was _The BFG_ ; and _The Lord of the Flies_ gave Piper her first nightmares in months.

Every day they waited for Edmond to come home; and every day when he didn't, they bolstered each other with sad half-smiles, and got on with things.


	4. Chapter 4

**How We Live Now**

 _04_

* * *

Isaac had been keeping track of the days and weeks and in late-November when the days were cruelly short and dreary and noncommittally raining and then sunny for five minutes and they woke to bitter frosts, a column of billowing black smoke far on the horizon that looked like a loose thread caught in a breeze from their vantage on Hawk Hill was too close for comfort, and after tending to the animals, they devoted an entire day to securing the house. Removed from any main road and accessible only via precarious old signs and local knowledge of the winding lanes, miles away from the village or any neighbours, the house was pretty secure. But it had been sequestered once and they didn't want to take any chances, and Daisy once more noticed that sometime in the last couple months, Isaac had become an adult. There was a new set to his shoulders and a diligence in his clever eyes that made her worry sometimes; he obviously had trouble forgetting what he had seen, but that made him cautious and quick.

They closed up the rest of the house, leaving only the kitchen, living-room, downstairs cloak-room and Aunt Penn's study accessible. The only time Isaac had raised his voice since their return was to call Piper stupid for getting upset about ruining Mummy's pretty wallpaper by hammering nails into the window-frames; the Army guys had brought sheets of plywood to prop over the windows but not nailed them in, and Isaac didn't like the idea of any light seeping through to the outside to draw the attention of anyone who happened to be passing by. They drew the curtains across to conceal the plywood, and if they had turned on the electricity the rooms might've looked normal, but they had turned off all the radiators because there was no central-heating, and as much as they had boarded the rooms up to prevent anyone getting in who oughtn't to, they blocked the windows of any draughts and closed the doors to keep all the heat concerted into the main rooms they used daily, even stuffing blankets along the bottom of the old doors.

Another day was spent reorganising the furniture, because it made sense to move Aunt Penn's unused computer and desk upstairs into one of the other rooms and bring in a couch and another armchair and the coffee-table because the living-room was bigger, and they brought two beds downstairs, frames and all, a twin from Isaac's room and Aunt Penn's double-bed because the girls would share, and Isaac found old camping-gear in the attic including sleeping-bags with fluffy fleece inserts and slippery silk liners that would've been a godsend on their hikes home to deter the bugs. So the living-room became their communal bedroom and Aunt Penn's room became the living-room and Daisy thought Piper and Isaac just liked to be near their mother's essence. Daisy herself liked the pressed-flower artwork and she liked to look at Aunt Penn's photograph of her mother while the others read.

On the first truly heinous winter day, Daisy decided they needed to do laundry, because she was a masochist and the black storm-clouds and thunder had them all on edge - the noise sounded too much like the bomb they had heard going off at the beginning of everything - and through dint of Herculean effort, they started to wash their clothing. They had been back since early-September and had become accustomed to not changing their clothes regularly or even often, but it had to be done eventually, and why waste a fine day by doing it then? There was a bathtub in the downstairs cloak-room and all they had to do was keep setting buckets and bowls and Tupperware out in the yard and Daisy would start to warm the water through, and they piled all their dirty clothes in the tub with a teacup of Persil non-bio detergent, and if farming was hard work Daisy had not been born to be a washerwoman of ye olden days because it was backbreaking and her hands pruned and started to peel. They soaked their clothes, used coarse brushes to try and get out the worst of the stains, wringing them out and leaving them to drip-dry in front of the fire and the Aga draped over clothes-horses Aunt Penn had in abundance because Mum said people had been drying clothes for millennia without tumble-dryers. Only after they were finished and Piper found a tube of Aunt Penn's favourite _Crabtree & Evelyn_ Gardeners Hand Recovery cream helped combat the cracked, bleeding skin on her fingers.

Tackling the sheets and things would take more effort and more space to dry things and Isaac agreed it would be better to wait for a clear day so they could at least use the washing-line outside in the garden to dry things.

When they had finished the laundry, Daisy continued to heat more water - it was throwing it down so violently the BFG might've been stood above the house throwing buckets at them in full force - and they had a hot bath.

To three kids who had warm washes if they could be bothered to heat the water with everything else they needed to do, and who regularly bathed in the river if they felt brave enough in the cold, a hot bath was the height of luxury, and they kept water on the stove to keep the bathwater hot as first Piper then Isaac then Daisy enjoyed a soak. With fresh sheets on the beds that smelled vaguely of marjoram and lemon-thyme and lavender because of Piper leaving dried bundles of herbs in the airing-cupboard and clean pyjamas, the crackle of the fire and the animals cuddling up as they listened to the storm raging and the rare treat of hot-cocoa - it was heaven.

It wasn't long after seeing the smoke that Jet warned them about a man limping down the lane. Armed with their guns but keeping out of sight, they watched carefully from the yard, and if the man hadn't stopped to sway and grab hold of the gatepost and vomit weakly, she wouldn't have recognised him.

It wasn't Edmond.

The devastating loss of that was swiftly pushed and beaten aside - purely for her own survival; he _would_ return - because in place of disappointment came surprise.

It wasn't Edmond. But it _was_ someone they knew.

Someone who had saved her and Piper's lives, that night the barn was attacked and they had run in the moonlight, which was a lot harder than it sounded. They had run until the gunfire sounded like a car backfiring and he had given Piper a big hug like he was her long-lost brother and a kiss on the top of her head because she had been the light of all their lives for a short time and he had turned back, toward the fighting.

Baz.

Holding tight onto her gun, because she wasn't an idiot, she gestured quickly for him to get back into the house where Piper was, and she crept out of the yard, eyeing the lane he had come from. It was freezing cold but a clear, dry day and he wore heavy fatigues that were slightly too big for him and they were caked in mud and blood and God knew what else, and Jet trotted loyally by Daisy's side, scenting the air, and she saw Baz carried no weapon but had a big Army-issue backpack on and looked like he was barely standing.

For a second he didn't seem to even register that she was even there, let alone recognise her, but he raised a shaky, bruised hand to wipe his chapped lips and Daisy saw one eye was purple and had probably just receded from massive swelling, and the other eye squinted at her in the brittle white sunlight, and those chapped, cut lips parted.

"Daisy?"

"Hey."

His good eye was bleary as he gazed past her to the house with a kind of delirious smile flickering over his chapped lips, and a hoarse kind of chuckle caught in his throat. She remembered how it felt to find Isaac; she couldn't imagine how Baz felt, seeing Daisy again. If there was a snowball's chance in Hell that Daisy and Piper had managed to get home, well… For once, the snowball had beaten the odds. _And it would again_ , she thought, thinking of Edmond. Wherever he was, she just hoped that he was warm. The days were getting bitter.

She glanced from Baz's hollow cheeks to the little puddle of vomit and wondered when his last meal had been, and why he was holding one arm funny. She could imagine what had happened to all the other guys from the barn if he was stood here, alone, miles away from where he had been last, looking like he'd been used to sweep the Welcome mat in Hell.

Jet wandered up to Baz and licked his palm, whining softly. A soft ghost of a smile whispered across Baz's bruised face.

"You're hurt."

"Just a smidge," Baz said, with a valiant smile reminiscent of the ones he used to give Piper.

Baz had saved their lives.

"Anyone following you?"

"No."

"Come on inside." She had to help him, his limp was so bad; and it was from a combination of blisters and a sprained ankle that was so swollen, Isaac feared it might actually be broken. But, no, Baz didn't think so, he was just stubborn and couldn't afford to stop and rest it. Plus it was too cold to sit anywhere exposed, and nowadays there weren't many sheltered places he trusted.

Isaac kept Piper in Aunt Penn's study until he was sure of Baz's identity; the story of the barn and their getaway and all Baz had gathered for their journey without even being asked was told, and Isaac's eyes glittered and he nodded firmly, making a decision.

They gave Baz the same care they had given each other the day they found each other in the lambing-barn all those weeks ago. Baz's clothes were stripped and some were put on the pile for the bonfire they were planning to get rid of the garden waste that they couldn't give the pigs, and he was given a warm-water wash with a flannel and big sponge, cataloguing his injuries.

Isaac beamed and said Not to worry, when they realised he had a dislocated shoulder; Joe used to slump over all the time with dislocated shoulders and black-eyes because his dad was an abusive dick, and George R. R. Martin was a good cure for it. Isaac and Edmond had always set Joe's arms. Careful of his arm, and of his swollen ankle, Daisy gave Baz a wash, and like Isaac had been, was too bone-weary to get embarrassed about being naked in front of a strange girl and a quirky boy-man who put two thick novels in a pillowcase and they laid Baz down on the kitchen-table when Isaac had brought him clean underwear and a pair of his dad's old jeans, and carefully, they managed to set Baz's arm. It was a weird popping noise that reminded Daisy of that night, but Isaac just shrugged and coughed a soft laugh and they tended to Baz's other, minor injuries, though his biggest complaint was obviously malnutrition. They elevated his bad ankle on a cushion as Isaac turned to pour them all a cup of herb tea sweetened with a little honey, and Daisy poured a ladle of cauliflower soup into a bowl and Piper burst into the room, grinning, embracing him like he truly was another long-lost brother, and she cuddled in Baz's lap as he tried to eat the soup, but it was rich and unfamiliar and he could only manage half, but that was okay; they'd all been on starvation rations too, and he just needed a little, often, or he'd feel worse. Jet rested his head on Baz's thigh, and he had to find it surreal, to be sat in a warm kitchen with familiar people, smiling faces, a healthy dog and a sense of calmness that radiated from them like warmth did from the oven.

They had once been protected by Baz and now they incorporated him into their tiny family. They were still missing one member but they never gave up hope that the next time Jet barked at a figure limping down the lane it would be Edmond. His hawk continued to soar and hunt in the area and every time Daisy glimpsed her, she thought of Edmond and his lips and his large hands and the scent of his skin and how it felt to be filled by him.

Baz had forgotten how to be taken care of. They forced him to rest his ankle, and Isaac taught him the exercises Joe had used to help his reset shoulder. He drank herb tea and ate tiny rations of porridge or had mouthfuls from their dinner but no more, not for a while, and he didn't sleep well on the couch because he was so used to sleeping on the hard ground, and Piper had smiled softly and said, It took us ages to turn into humans again, as if the little wood-sprite had ever truly been one. So he slept on the floor in the kitchen by the Aga, with his gun in his hand, and sometimes Daisy knew he didn't sleep but sat against the wall watching the door all night.

The only news they heard in months came from Baz, and with a subtle glance at Piper as she poured herb tea, Daisy knew there was a lot he wouldn't say, because even if she was no longer a _child_ she was still a nine-year-old kid and some things a soldier just didn't tell civilians, even ones who had escaped a raid, and worse.

The murder of Joe that afternoon had sparked a rash of violence across the countryside; the spark in a keg of gun-power, as it were, and it was only because the British Army had been allowed a reprieve to get their shit together for a few months after the initial Occupation that there had been any chance of them retaliating and even gaining ground. But the soldiers who were occupying Britain didn't have much hope of ever going home again, and that made them even more dangerous; they were the sorts of people who had nothing to lose, and so, Baz had murmured to Daisy one night when the others were fast asleep, and she alluded to the foreign soldiers and the girls in the woods, that they were the ones who were committing the worst atrocities. Like Gatesfield.

There were no repercussions for dead men.

Britain right now looked like a hostage situation - only it wasn't a high-school or an Embassy or even a stadium of people who were being held at gunpoint, it was the entire _nation_.

And yet the terrorists hadn't accounted for the unyielding determination and stern fighting spirit of the British to _keep_ _going_. As Churchill had once said, as poignant and heart-breaking and rallying now as it was in 1940; "We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. _We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be_. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing-grounds, we shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. _We shall never surrender_!"

And they had not. The British Army, the Navy and the Air-Force had regrouped offshore and with new allies, the Coalition - Britain, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Germany and all their combined allies - were even now eradicating the scourge from central Europe, and had, for want of a better word, supported the invasion of Britain. The British Army, for the first time in its history, was forced to invade its own island, and reclaim it from an occupying force; they were helped by the Land Army that had been left behind to power through their shock at the nuclear detonation and sudden Occupation, proving once again that British resilience was inherited from even greater heroes than themselves, grandfathers and great-uncles who had sacrificed their lives to prevent such a thing as they were experiencing now _never_ happening again.

But it had; and across Britain the true spirit of the British people shone through the grim reality of war. They were taking back their country. The terrorist attacks had levelled London, Paris, Geneva and Berlin in one afternoon; but outside of it, normal people were showing what British strength was and were taking back their homes, their towns, their cities, with the Land Army boys like Baz.

The truth of it was, the nuclear detonations were the first act of war but no more had been set off, at least not in Europe, and there were some countries completely untouched by war - the majority of South America, parts of Canada, a good part of Russia and the innermost African countries, most of India and her neighbours - and Anzac troops were once again deployed abroad to help their Mother country though no nuclear strike against New Zealand or Australia had been confirmed, the last Baz had heard, and Japan and China were allied with them against North Korea.

According to Baz, no more nuclear bombs had been detonated: But Paris had been hit again the same day as London, and Berlin and Moscow were ash, Geneva a crater. Baz showed them on the Road Atlas where the nuclear bomb had been dropped in London, how far the estimated destruction spanned, and where large bombs had been detonated in Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow, as well as Dublin. The Channel Islands had been overlooked and were thus vital for the British Forces launching the invasion home; during World War II they had been occupied by the Nazis, and much of their installations had been preserved as a reminder, and were now appropriated by the Royal Army and Air Force and Navy.

The irony was heart-breaking. It should never have been necessary. But it just showed the terrorists had no respect for their enemies' history. The Channel Islands were crucial and the last Baz had heard, the British Army, supported by the Air Force and the Navy, had launched simultaneous attacks at strategic points across Britain - strategic locations only those in the British Forces would know about intimately as strategic for the success of an invasion.

Britain was an island nation with a history of invasion that dated back _millennia_.

Only now, it was the British who had to reclaim their country, and they were doing so with dogged tenacity.

As Daisy had experienced, only when brutally tested did they learn what they were truly capable of.

The British people would endure, as they always had.

She had no idea what the state of the wider world looked like, and she doubted they would until the war truly ended, but what little Baz knew heartened the others, and had Piper convinced that Mummy was an Expert on Loony Extremists and they'd protect her because she could read the terrorists' minds and would Save The World. Baz caught Daisy's eye when Piper had left the room and Isaac pointedly didn't look anyone in the face but said, I think Jet needs to go out and he disappeared for half an hour, and when he returned it was getting dark and Daisy pretended not to notice that his eyes were red and puffy and he went to bed early with his back to them even though he'd promised Piper a game of gin-rummy.

Isaac was quiet for days but he looked after the animals and gradually they seemed to work the same magic on him as he usually did them. Jet never strayed from his side, and on a morning hike on a bitter December morning, they paused and Isaac grinned, saying We'll need to get the ladder, because Velvet Shank mushrooms were growing in profusion like Christmas ornaments high up the trunk of a dead elm tree, and the name was so funny they just had to get that ladder and harvest the wild mushrooms.

Secretly Daisy had been ticking days off Aunt Penn's twenty-four month calendar, and on Christmas Eve she stayed up late with Baz, who helped her decorate the kitchen with ornaments and tinsel and paper-chains found in a huge tub in the garage, and there were leftover Christmas crackers, whatever they were, and Daisy had found a box of _Lindt_ Lindor chocolate-truffle balls in an obscure corner of the utility-room. They were up late and rose earlier than usual, and she and Baz, who had been learning the ropes from Isaac and Piper, tended to the animals and did the chores and lit the Aga, and on Christmas Day, Baz helped her make a full English breakfast, wartime-style, with jarred tomatoes and the four eggs she had secreted away, scrambled with ground black pepper and some of Meg's milk to make them even richer, and Isaac's Velvet Shank mushrooms fried in some rabbit fat and olive-oil with lots of pepper, and hash-browns, and one of the small black puddings sliced and fried, and some fried rabbit in place of bacon, and most of a tin of _Heinz_ baked beans.

After letting them sleep in late, Daisy woke her cousins with Deck the Halls on the piano. She got a pillow thrown at her head but Jet barked and wagged his tail because Baz had treated him to a little rabbit grease over his dry dog-food and Piper and Isaac pulled on sweaters over their pyjamas and shuffled into the kitchen, as Gandalf always advised, following their noses.

There were sprigs of holly everywhere and a wreath with ivy and berries over the window and Piper's glittery paper-chains, Aunt Penn's revived velvety red amaryllis stood tall and proud on the sideboard with jar-hyacinths next to an ancient crepe-paper and toilet-roll angel and a Nativity scene made of felted animals, a miniature unicorn as the donkey and a Lego Jesus, and Piper's early paper-whites stood in a vase on the table with the steaming plates of food, a Christmas cracker at every setting and a _Lindt_ chocolate ball on every chair. Daisy had hidden away the box so Piper couldn't scoff all of them. Baz had tuned the radio onto the BBC which had been taken back - kind of like the Weasley twins in _Deathly Hallows_ , Piper mused - and on Christmas morning there was a special broadcast, and they played favourite Christmas pop-songs that everyone knew and sang along to with gusto, and a special Christmas news report featured and as the day went on, they played familiar and extraordinary and poignant classical pieces - Elgar's _Nimrod_ and Copland's _Fanfare for the Common Man_ and afterwards, Tchaikovsky's _Nutcracker_ in its entirety, and they enjoyed their breakfast feast and Daisy cleaned her whole plate and enjoyed every single bite and they pulled the crackers open and wore their colourful paper crowns all day as they went for a walk over the common and settled back in Aunt Penn's study to play _Bananagrams_ and read _Little Women_ and Daisy played Christmas carols on the piano and they pretended that they weren't upset that it was Christmas Day and Edmond still wasn't home.

To say thank you for their Christmas, Isaac and Piper let Daisy languish in bed late the next morning, Boxing Day, letting her lounge and read in bed, finishing _Stardust_ , finally bringing her a cup of _PG Tips_ tea to coax her out of bed, and they prepared the bubble-and-squeak with poached eggs for a midday dinner after another long walk to Hawk Hill, and it was a picturesque English winter's day, bright and clear, their breath gusting in plumes and the river gurgling delightedly and the birds twittering joyously, their hands wrapped in gloves and mittens and hats pulled over their ears and their noses running, but they were exhilarated and smiling and appreciated their meal all the more.

By the time Baz mentioned leaving, it was mid-January and they had come to view him as part of the furniture, really; he had fit seamlessly into their odd jigsaw-puzzle family, but he was part of the Land Army and he was healed.

But as Isaac said, he was doing a lot here, at their farm, and it was necessary work. They might not be feeding the five-thousand but they had essential skills, and soon enough when the Army invaded and the Occupation ended he could be first in line to get himself killed overseas but there needed to be people staying on the farms, now, to defend what they had managed to salvage. It wasn't like there was going to be a ceasefire and everyone could start shopping at _Waitrose_ and ordering Chinese takeaway again.

Isaac got very upset about Baz possibly leaving; he actually burst into tears, and Daisy realised it was the first time Isaac had argued with anyone since Edmond had turned back for Gatesfield - and for the same reason.

Baz was right, about returning to the nearest installation of British soldiers, to get his orders; but Isaac was right too, about Baz having plenty of opportunity to get himself killed later, but they needed him here, now, helping to maintain the farm.

And there was a reason Baz was the sole remaining soldier from a makeshift regiment, limping down a country lane half-dead. He didn't have to say it because they all knew it; the others were dead, and he was fighting on to find the next Land Army station.

Truth be told, they had become accustomed to Baz.

Isaac's willpower won.

Baz stayed.


	5. Chapter 5

**How We Live Now**

 _05_

* * *

They made it through a bitterly cold January through tenacity alone, and an Aga that was never allowed to cool down. They drank herb tea and read and worked on their little farm, pulling winter root-vegetables and starting to prepare in the greenhouse for sowing seeds, and Daisy spent the hours when she wasn't working or cooking, sitting at the kitchen-table with a notebook. She had started to write everything down, and it was healing to her, as much as the animals were for Isaac and being home, with them, was for Piper.

In February, they had snow. This meant, Isaac said, that it was warmer than it had been all the previous month. They had had hail during January and torrential rains, thunderstorms that kept Baz up all night because they sounded too much like warfare.

But the snow… It blanketed everything in pristine white, and with no cars to dirty everything to grey sludge, the English countryside became a postcard. Piper couldn't resist building a snowman in the garden complete with horse-chestnut eyes and carrot nose, but they had to hike over to the neighbouring farm to gather more feed because the animals couldn't get out to forage what wasn't there. Even Piper couldn't find much, and they were even more careful with their rations. They heard on the radio that the North was going through the worst winter in years, as much due to the snow as the lack of life-giving power, and they appreciated their eight inches of snow for what it was; a pretty inconvenience, at worst.

But the snow had a magical effect, dampening every sound, cocooning them. Daisy loved the soft crunch underfoot and the delicate snowflakes drifting idly past, clinging to her eyelashes and tickling her lips. And it did feel warmer than January had; and it showed how strong they had all grown, in sweaters and gardeners' gloves and Wellies and not much else, carrying on with their chores in spite of the snow, because the activity kept them warm, kept them hungry, and rosti potatoes and a fried egg with a pot of herb tea was one of the best things in the world.

On one of the balmier February days, the snows had started to melt in sunshine that was brighter and hotter than Daisy could remember for months, and Piper smiled and they went for a walk to Hawk Hill to get a look at how the land lay now with the snows melting, and Piper pointed out the foot-high hellebores that were curious and unassuming and very pretty and stubbornly flowering amid the snow, and the dainty snowdrops that peeked through pristine white and fresh green, and the vivid spots of colour that were saffron-yellow and startling purple crocuses. There were even some early cream-coloured primroses that signalled the coming of spring if nothing else did. They could hear birds singing and the melting snow crunched underfoot, and they stood frozen when Jet started to bark, and bolted as if he had scented a rabbit.

Piper glanced at Daisy, wondering, Where's he off to in such a hurry?

Daisy shrugged, but Jet started barking then, loudly and persistently, and because Piper darted off after him in case he was in trouble, Daisy had no choice to follow, and though Daisy trusted the intuitive sheepdog, if anything happened to her or Piper because of him, she would never forgive him.

Jet found Edmond.

At least, under the swelling and bruising, and the healing and new burns, and open cuts and sores, Daisy recognised his large hands and the long nose and the bruised jawline. Edmond.

He was deathly thin, worse than any of them had ever been at their worst, and what they could see of his skin was vividly bruised under the dirt, open cuts angry and healed wounds pink and puckered. His cheeks would've been totally hollow if it weren't for the bruising, which had swollen one side of his face to grotesque proportions, the other side not as swollen but just as bruised, and his eyes were so swollen they were sealed shut. He wore a battered coat and jeans and his old hiking boots but no gloves and he wore no hat.

"Daisy…?"

Jet had found him by the hawk's sanctuary, curled up on the ground. He must have found the familiar landmark and collapsed there, perhaps the relief of finding it sapping him of his last willpower to keep going just that bit farther. Maybe he dreaded what he might find if he made it home.

There had never been a doubt in Daisy's mind that Edmond would return home to them.

But had he worried that they never would? When he had separated from Isaac, had he ever had a heart-crushing moment of realisation that Isaac was no longer by his side…?

She reached down, carefully, not wanting to startle him, and gently turned Edmond onto his back. She pressed her two fingers against his pulse-point and breathed a sigh of relief as she heard the sound of agonised breathing more like a groan. But he was _alive_.

Her eyes burning, hot tears dripping silently down her cold cheeks, Daisy knelt down and leaned over Edmond and pressed her cheek to his and whispered that he was safe; he was home; they had found him; Jet had found him; they were going to take him home; they would look after him; they had missed him; they loved him; she was in love with him; and they were never going to separate again.

Daisy told Piper to go and get the boys, and to set water to boil and get the emergency blanket from the First Aid kit and clean clothes, and between the three of them, Baz and Isaac and Daisy, they carried shockingly thin Edmond to the house. Piper had set about getting everything ready, had thrown an old sheet over the couch so they could lay Edmond down, but he started and Jet had to curl up at his hip like he used to, to calm him. Isaac was shell-shocked, and Piper was silently crying as she opened the First Aid kit and Baz helped strip the clothes from Edmond's body, and Daisy worked on auto-pilot and didn't let it in that Edmond was _here_ , because this broken boy in front of her wasn't _her_ Edmond, but he needed her regardless and thoughts of him were all that had kept her going when keeping Piper alive and safe had overwhelmed her and filled her with nothing but a sense of futility.

As if sensing how volatile Isaac and Piper were in that moment, Baz took them out to check on the animals while Daisy tended to their brother. Because the sight of him like this had broken Daisy's shrivelled, battered heart into a billion-trillion pieces.

Edmond's body told a story of neglect and abuse, and Daisy doubted she would ever learn the details even if she had wanted to. She washed him from his hair to his toes: Like them, his feet were calloused from blisters hardening, and from there up everything was either cut or badly bruised. His knees were black; his thighs burned by cigarettes, just like his chest, which was a crisscross of what looked like belt-lashes, healing scars and bright red cuts, purplish and healing greenish-yellow bruises, and she could count every one of his ribs, any substance he'd once had now a memory. From his fingertips to halfway up his forearms, his skin was blistered and peeled, covered in burns. Baz had to help her reset two dislocated fingers, and she used medical tape to bind them together to heal. His fingernails were blackened with bruises. What looked like a healed bullet wound scarred his shoulder and must have missed his collarbone by a fraction of an inch, and Baz murmured quietly one night that it looked like it might've been a through-and-through and someone had treated the wound by burning it. His neck was cut and Baz recognised the wound on his cheek as someone having punched him possibly while wearing a heavy ring, because it had nicked the skin and looked sore. He had to have taken a good few hits to the face for all that swelling, but as the days went on, it started to go down.

After getting him washed down, including his back, which was another story altogether, Daisy rationed the ointment and used some of Piper's honey to treat the wounds, though the burns had to heal on their own, she didn't want to make them worse. She even rinsed and washed his hair, combing it through; she covered him in the silvery emergency-blanket, with many more bundled on top, and she knew he shivered for a long time before the warmth started to do its job, and maybe he slipped into a dreamless sleep, because he lay perfectly still, just breathing gently, with Jet curled at his side, for a day and a night.

It didn't take long to realise that _their_ Edmond had disappeared at Gatesfield. Maybe he had tucked away that Eddie in a quiet little place inside his mind, too frightened to let him out and expose him to more pain, but the Edmond who had crawled to the hawk sanctuary in the snow was _altered_.

He could feel what he looked like even if he didn't look in any mirrors to see it; and she wondered a couple times whether he felt ashamed that they had all seen him that way. It didn't matter. He hadn't seen them at their worst; who were they to judge him at his?

Maybe it was the familiar voices, or Jet's warmth and the familiar way he curled up at Edmond's side, maybe it was the fact that no-one touched him except with utmost tenderness and care, maybe it was all those things combined with warmth, but his shaking frail body started to relax, and heal, and the swelling over his eyes went down gradually, but he never looked anyone in the eye, not for a long while. They cared for him as much as he would let them; they nurtured him like a dying starving thing, because he was. Like them, like Baz, they rationed his food, little and often, first spoonfuls of flavourful broth, then soup, and eventually the rice-pudding Daisy made using rice, goat's milk, honey and nutmeg and baked in the Aga for a treat.

It was different with Edmond home; because he wasn't _their_ Edmond and his brother and sister knew it. The burns and scars and abuse hit Isaac the worst; it had happened to Edmond _after_ they separated.

Perhaps it was because Daisy hadn't known Edmond as long, regardless of being in love with him, that he let her look after him, in a way he averted his gaze and closed himself off to Isaac and even Piper. She told them it wasn't their fault, and it wasn't Edmond's either, and Baz said it would take a while for Edmond's mind to heal from the trauma his body was steadily healing from. Baz was a soldier and had seen too many lads like Edmond, suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, and he said it wasn't a surprise. Edmond was protecting himself. By not engaging with them, by not speaking - he never said a word, even when he had to be in discomfort - he was protecting himself from further pain.

Daisy knew he had witnessed the massacre at Gatesfield. It didn't take a genius to figure that out. And he was punishing himself. Edmond had turned all that pain and hate inward; she guessed he blamed himself for not getting to the farm in time, that in not convincing the others to leave he had failed them, and it was his fault they had been killed.

For days, he lay on the couch, tucked under blankets, guarded by Jet, waited on by the others; Daisy kept cooking, and they kept doing their chores. Life went on, and gradually Edmond reclaimed his place in their family, their lives.

He never spoke.

But he _worked_.

He took to the gardens and fields with a furious devotion that frightened her. Day after day, in all weathers, Edmond left the house with the birds, the sky just starting to lighten, and he toiled. He channelled all that pain and impotent rage and turned it into harrowing beauty.

As the days turned into weeks and weeks became months and Edmond grew physically stronger, gradually his old mannerisms returned. He never spoke, but he listened, and communicated in his silent, watchful way, and after the first few skittish jumps and wary looks from under his eyelashes, he let Daisy touch him. Just gently, a hand brushing his shoulder or touching his waist, running her knuckles gently over his jaw, sifting her fingers through his dark hair… He still froze for an instant if she dared approach him from behind, but now he allowed her to thread her arms around his middle and rest her cheek against his shoulder-blade and listen to his heart beating strongly. He let her take his hand whenever they went for walks, foraging the hedgerows, and sometimes when they were working in the flower-garden and she was content to toil beside him amongst the vibrant flowers, she felt her lips twitch into a smile and sometimes, she caught him staring at her face with something like longing, and frustration.

Edmond was in there.

She concerted all her willpower into being patient, for Edmond.

It wasn't always easy. But nothing in their lives was now. Isaac had it worst, trying to accept this new brother he recognised, but didn't understand. Piper was Piper, and that helped more than she would ever know. To her, Edmond was still Edmond, because he had always been quiet and intuitive and they went on long walks foraging together with Jet and a wicker-basket; but Isaac had been the one to force Edmond from Gatesfield, the one Edmond had left behind when he couldn't bear it.

Piper was solemn and smiling, and Isaac was frustrated by the humans; only his animals calmed him.

The only time Daisy lost it was when Edmond hurt himself on purpose.

She found him in the downstairs cloakroom, lines of red vivid on his tanned skin. She has asked, Did he hurt himself? And realised that, yes, _he_ had hurt himself.

 _Don't you ever try and leave us again_!

She pressed a washcloth over his arm and held it tight as he writhed away from her, but she held fast and glared up at him and felt tears burning her cheeks and hated them, because she was furious, You work yourself to death in that garden working on the dahlias, and go out in the snow to wrap hay around the plants if you want but don't you dare hurt yourself. And she pulled him into a hug, and somewhere along the way he melted, and held her in a way he hadn't in months, his big strong hands on her lower-back searing her cool skin, the thump of his heart frenzied under her ear, his scent and his warmth and his strength seeping into her, and his tight hug was his apology, for scaring her worse than anything she had yet endured.

Maybe he hurt himself out of frustration. He hadn't said a word in months, not to anyone, though Piper carried on a conversation with him as if he did, and Baz would speak quietly to him about things Daisy didn't ask about but seemed to calm him. He stood and took Isaac's yelling, his jaw working, eyes glazed but pointed at the floor and she saw his hands shaking and he would sometimes pinch himself, but Edmond would not speak.

After the Occupation ended and Baz put on his fatigues again, it was June. Almost an entire year had passed since the detonation of the nuclear-bomb that destroyed London, and Edmond's flower-garden was the most beautiful and most harrowing thing Daisy had ever seen. Piper cried when she hugged Baz goodbye; Isaac was solemn but managed a smile and said something optimistic.

Edmond knew what was going on. He knew what Baz was returning to. They tried to coax him to say goodbye, or hug Baz or anything; he stayed in the garden, furiously working, until late into the night and Daisy carried a lantern outside, wrapped in a blanket, and she sat in the amber light on the edge of one of the raised beds and waited. And she saw the tears glinting on his cheeks, and eventually he collapsed, exhausted, physically and emotionally _done_ , and laid his head in her lap and his big shoulders heaved as she rubbed his back.

None of them had wanted Baz to leave; but Edmond knew better than all of them what might be his fate. And sometimes death was easier.

After the Occupation, Britain regrouped. A new Government had formed; the power was turned back on, though they had gotten so used to living without it that none of them liked turning on the lights. Daisy did use the washing-machine for laundry, though. The village had survived largely unscathed, buildings-wise, with only a handful of homes burned out, and those who could had started to return, to reclaim their homes; refugees trickled out from the London Boroughs, and that was how their small farm gave work to twenty people. Somehow, because they had experience and had kept their own small farm going over the winter throughout the Occupation, even though it was just four skinny kids and a healing Land Army reserve and they had next to no power and a healthy distrust of strangers, they were allocated the land previously owned by their neighbours, the Bowens. Neither of them had survived the Occupation; but Isaac said they'd be happy their land was being properly farmed again.

Crops spread as far as the eye could see, and they toiled the old-fashioned way, rising at dawn, putting in hours of backbreaking work. Daisy's initial scepticism about Isaac's success in growing mushrooms was proven wrong; Piper taught cheese-making to native Londoners who had never even seen a live chicken, and her herd of goats grew. Somehow, people heard about the farm, and of the magic of Isaac and Edmond and Piper, who coaxed and treated and gentled any animal that was brought to them. They acquired some ducks, and geese, and the introduction of a cockerel meant they could breed chickens, while keeping a select few ladies cloistered like nuns for the sole production of eggs. Isaac bred his pigs, and this drew a skilled butcher to the farm, who taught them about slaughtering and carving the animals, and also how to make sausages and black- pudding and smoke and cure the meat. Edmond took no part in that aspect of the farm. But he had figured out how to trap rabbits, rather than snare and kill them; they bred rabbits for meat, and the once-disbanded local shooting club re-emerged from the ashes of the Occupation, and pheasant was added to the offerings. Due to the practicalities of shooting, the ammunition and the guns, it was rare that they were brought a deer, but the entire village knew about it when one had been hunted. The deer population across Britain grew; and they became complacent around humans, to the point that they maintained a small herd of deer for meat when Edmond coaxed a herd home one misty dusk.

In a lot of ways, in the country at least, life returned to the way it had been for centuries, the farms the source of work and the centre of local life. The farm had drawn the butcher to them; and also a veterinarian, a sheep-farmer who had lost his home and most of his flock, and refugees from London who had rarely seen the countryside and quickly fell in love with Piper gentle solemnity and respected Edmond's PTSD and even seemed to admire Daisy's patience.

It wasn't just their home anymore, or even just a farm; it was the centre of a small but somehow, miraculously, thriving community. There were withered old farmers with hacking laughs and gnarled walking-sticks and holes in their Wellies, and there were Afro-Caribbean émigrés from London with their small kids who learned to milk goats and pick cauliflowers like the best of them, and a young teacher who gave lessons to the kids and loved Aunt Penn's library but also managed the administration of the farm for them and helped with the egg-hunting every morning and learned a lot from Piper and Edmond and Isaac about foraging.

The continued absence of machinery meant that after the Occupation, at least one species was happy; the honeybees. Wildflowers thrived, and so did the honeybees. Daisy had adopted Aunt Penn's hives; it was something she and Edmond did together, and he had taught her all he knew, without ever having to say a word. She had learned how to be as intuitive and observant as he was through proximity, and patience.

The old farmer had lost his farm but managed to save a few of his sheep, and because their farm had ancestrally bred sheep for the meat and the wool, and the countryside was beautiful and lush, they thrived. Edmond was calmest in his garden, but the next best thing was tending to the cows. They had a small herd that lived in the meadow and liked wandering to the common, and were bred for meat as well as dairy; they had glossy chestnut coats and big black intelligent, calm eyes, and they loved Edmond. Daisy liked when the baby calves sucked on her fingers urgently; there was no more intense breeding, either, the calves stayed by their mothers and male offspring was prized because they could breed.

The village filled up, even the rooms above the pub, and they trudged to the village hall once a month for announcements, or else listened every Sunday to special Government reports on the radio. National Service was reintroduced: most of the workers on the farm were serving theirs, though some had asked to stay after they finished their two years. As the war went on, they became home to a handful of soldiers discharged for the same reason Edmond was declared by an expert psychologist as Unfit for Active Duty when he turned eighteen; they had post-traumatic stress disorder. They worked side-by-side with Edmond, who still didn't speak, but they learned from him, and in working they started healing, and they were good hard-workers who treated little Piper like a queen and brought Daisy posies of wildflowers they had picked on their walks back to the house.

The word conscription was bandied about, but for a few years there were still enough people like Baz willing to sign up and fight - if it meant somewhere to sleep and a meal every day, which they couldn't be guaranteed elsewhere - and only in the last few months of the British involvement in active fighting was it introduced; Isaac narrowly missed it, but would have had special dispensation anyway. He was too vital where he was. Everywhere in the area, they called him the Witch Doctor; he was extraordinary with the diagnosing and treating of sick animals. Sometimes it was medical, sometimes it was behavioural, but either way, good livestock was too precious to waste.

It was years before they learned that Aunt Penn had been shot trying to re-enter England just months after the London atomic-bomb, trying to get back to her children.

But Piper was right, in a way: Aunt Penn's work _had_ saved the world. The backbone of the new global peace treaties had been written by Aunt Penn.

By the time the American consular caught up to her a second time, Daisy had already applied for dual-citizenship, based on her mother's nationality, and if her father had done so when she was born she could've avoided a lot of aggravation.

She served her two years' National Service on the farm, rehabilitating soldiers discharged from active duty for mental-health issues. She guessed she had spent so much time in various shrinks' offices in her adolescence that she had achieved a degree in psychology through osmosis.

But she did receive a new passport, and it declared her British, and that was that.

The day her new passport arrived by Royal Mail, Edmond calmly approached her, standing close like he always used to, twining his fingers with hers, and rested his forehead against hers.

When things like airports and international post opened up again, Daisy sent a letter to her father.

She told him she forgave him for her shitty upbringing, for his atrocious taste in women; and she thanked him for sending her home, to her family. She told him about her cousins, and about the Occupation, and the farm. She told him about Edmond, who, after _years_ , and the certainty that she was staying that came with her passport and with their quiet wedding, and the birth of their first daughter Penn, was starting to speak again.

The day she was born, it was hot, and bright, and the birds sang just like they had on that Perfect Day so long ago. Edmond held her in his strong, scarred arms, and for the first time, Daisy saw him cry. His eyes alive, he kissed her tiny fingers and her tiny petal lips and he whispered _I'm very happy to meet you_.

They worked on the farm, with Isaac and Piper and their friends, and they raised their children, and they loved each other with a ferocity and tenderness and devotion that transcended all pain, _and_ that is _how we live now_ …


End file.
